"Polish tram stop" at Stellwerk Zollverein

From May 5th to 12th, 2006 the cities Essen, Gelsenkirchen and Bochum will conjoin to a virtual “Polish Triangle” by means of the event series „Wszystko jasne? Got it? – Understanding Europe: Poland". For that purpose more than 50 activities about the German-Polish relationship are planned. Locations, players, topics and events will be connected by the local traffic lines 107 (Essen-Gelsenkirchen, the "culture line"), line 302 (Gelsenkirchen-Bochum, „Capital of culture-tram“) and line S1 (Essen-Bochum).

This will be organised by the Federal Agency for Civic Education / bpb supported by the Agency for Civic Education of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and in cooperation with numerous local and other partners. The Polish ambassador Andrzej Byrt has took up the patronage for „Wszystko jasne?".

Stellwerk Zollverein e.V. will participate with an exhibition of the Polish artist Iwona Liegmann who will start a six-monthly artist-in-residence stay as the association´s scholarship holder beginning from May.

Exhibition and project preview "Iwona Liegmann, artist from Toruń (Poland)"

Immediately after her arrival at Stellwerk Zollverein, shaft 4/5/11, the artist will introduce herself with a small selection of works – and show a first prospect of her Essen project „Looking for garden dwarves ready to reveal their secrets“.

Work samples from two earlier series, "Lobster family" and "Little creatures", are presented together in 9 object cases. Here the artist explores humorously and playfully facets of human mentality. Iwona Liegmann´s exceeding indulgence to trash, expressing itself in a very ‘baroque’ manner through her painting and object art, is changing between fascination and irony. Her works which step out from reference points in reality to the phantastic, cannot easily be matched to usual categories. But obviously the artist, who says that she doesn´t want to avoid „kitsch in the positive sense“, is always keeping an eye on historically ‘weak links’ in the traditions of the so-pretended trivial. From fairy tales and folklore to contemporary mass culture and it´s industrially prefabricated plastic worlds develops an artwork, which is raising questions about orientations of cultural identity between the flashy illusions of the pop world and a nostalgic reference to an at least equally phantasmatic world of the past.

In Essen Liegmann wants to search for "forgotten, lost or dormant dwarves" and reveal their "secrets" – in regard to the coal mining era in the Ruhr area and some peculiarities of the local mentality. That the ‚German’ garden dwarves only stand around passively in the front gardens, seems disappointing for her.

In order to find a sufficient number of dwarves convenient to her intentions, she is hoping for any relevant information and lenders on the part of the inhabitants. Finally the artist is planning to realise a multi-part installation work consisting of numerous objects and an „Essen dwarf map“ in big-scale painting.

The artist will live and work in the Stellwerk building on the Triple Z area from May 1st until October 31st, 2006. Thereby she is especially looking forward to visitors of her open studio.

Exhibition information "Iwona Liegmann, artist from Toruń (Poland)"