The occasion for our exhibition with Wolf Hamm and Hartmut Neumann is the extensive double exhibition ›Hartmut Neumann - Verbotene Zeiten‹ und ›Wolf Hamm - Große Prozesse‹
(›Hartmut Neumann - Forbidden Zones‹ and ›Wolf Hamm - Major Trials‹) at the ›Max Ernst Museum Brühl of the LVR‹. We would like to pick up on this show in our premises with an equally exciting juxtaposition of these very different contemporary positions and show that there are a number of similarities in terms of content in the oeuvre of the two artists. As in Brühl, the artists' works are partly spatially separated and yet form a coexistence and enter into a common dialogue.

In the pictorial worlds of Hartmut Neumann (*1954), nature is in the foreground. The exaggerated worlds - powerful landscape spaces - contain an inexhaustible reservoir of natural forms from flora and fauna, expanded by cosmic realms and planetary events, and present us with works of unbridled splendour and vitality. The exuberant nature is often full of frivolities. Everything sprouts, grows and swells and offers numerous subtle erotic allusions. Significant, however, is the absence of people in Neumann's pictorial worlds. Here, nature has completely taken over the direction and forms itself into a surreal, sensual panorama beyond common notions.
The exhibition also presents new sculptural works by Hartmut Neumann, in which the artist combines painting with sculpture. With papier-mâché, plastic, wood and tree branches as well as oil paint, his lush plant world becomes sculptural.

The situation is different with Wolf Hamm (*1974), whose pictorial worlds revolve around man or mankind in its entire development. The artist comments on current events, the state of the world and the human condition in general in an enormous complexity, both on a visual and intellectual level. At the same time, the work of the German-Finnish artist is a very personal one, often revolving thematically around family unity, life and death.
His sometimes exuberant pictorial and conceptual worlds find their own unique challenge in the technique of reverse glass painting, in which he applies thecom...

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In the pictorial worlds of Hartmut Neumann (*1954), nature is in the foreground. The exaggerated worlds - powerful landscape spaces - contain an inexhaustible reservoir of natural forms from flora and fauna, expanded by cosmic realms and planetary events, and present us with works of unbridled splendour and vitality. The exuberant nature is often full of frivolities. Everything sprouts, grows and swells and offers numerous subtle erotic allusions. Significant, however, is the absence of people in Neumann's pictorial worlds. Here, nature has completely taken over the direction and forms itself into a surreal, sensual panorama beyond common notions.
The exhibition also presents new sculptural works by Hartmut Neumann, in which the artist combines painting with sculpture. With papier-mâché, plastic, wood and tree branches as well as oil paint, his lush plant world becomes sculptural.

The situation is different with Wolf Hamm (*1974), whose pictorial worlds revolve around man or mankind in its entire development. The artist comments on current events, the state of the world and the human condition in general in an enormous complexity, both on a visual and intellectual level. At the same time, the work of the German-Finnish artist is a very personal one, often revolving thematically around family unity, life and death.
His sometimes exuberant pictorial and conceptual worlds find their own unique challenge in the technique of reverse glass painting, in which he applies the composition laterally reversed and, unlike in a canvas painting, the first layer of paint applied is the first to be visible.

The exhibition presents primarily new pictures but also several older works by the artists and provides insights and views into a lush and particularly imaginative world that is well worth immersing oneself in.

Wolf Hamm, Hartmut Neumann