HandGemenge

9 – 25 August 2009

Private View: Sunday 9 August, 11-2 pm


Deutsches Ledermuseum

Frankfurter Strasse 86

63067 Offenbach

The German Leather Museum (DLM) is pleased to present “HandGemenge”, a solo exhibition presenting new works of Aline Von Der Assen.

The various sections of the German Leather Museum served as inspiration for Von Der Assen’s drawing workshops, which involved the public into the art making process. The works evolved during a six month artist-in-residency at the DLM in collaboration with the visitors.

The motifs of the drawings feature similarities to folktales – each narrator adding their part towards the story. It is difficult to figure out each individual artist of the drawings as they evolve into a piece of multiple authorship. On large-format paper sheets the participants start working each for themselves, but as their drawings grow they reach the limits of their individual actions and start collaborating. They reflect their own desires towards a concept of community.

In varying handwritings universal and phantasmagorical narratives evolve. The tales breach the rules of reality; they blend fragments of everyday live with marvellous elements to a fickle mixture. Myths of heroes and heroines battling the eternal fight of good against evil feed the source of the drawings.

Aline Von Der Assen was awarded with the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2008 and the Prix des Arts Rotary Club Strasbourg 2007. She has exhibited and performed widely including the Jerwood Space, Centre for Drawing and The Nunnery. From September on she will be taking part in a seven-month residency at the Centre for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu in Japan.