STOP THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST ART AND NATURE
Opening: 17 April 2026, from 7 pm
From 9:30 pm: music by Martin Ebner
Exhibition: 18 April 2026 – 31 May 2026
Finissage: 31 May 2026, from 3-6 pm
6-8 pm listening session: Frauke Boggasch will play tracks from her collection of Japanese noise music.
Open by appointment: 0178 3298106 or mailto@after-the-butcher.de
Longtime friends Elke Marhöfer and Heidrun Holzfeind explore the transformative potential of social and ecological realities, whether through nonhuman actors such as animals, plants and objects, or through people and the urban and architectural environments they inhabit.
The latest body of work by Elke Marhöfer emerges from an engagement with animistic pottery. Two interconnected series are presented in the exhibition. from 7pm to 4am brings together a range of nocturnal protagonists—figures that inhabit her garden during these hours, occupying a threshold between observation and imagination. witch marks engages with apotropaic symbols historically used to ward off misfortune. These include eye motifs that operate as protective signs while evoking a symbolic and material continuity with vernacular traditions.
Objects may possess a functional use and still exist as contemporary art—a cup or a bowl, for instance. Utility does not preclude their status as art; rather, such objects can be understood as experimental articulations of the virtual, or of aisthesis, in relation to one’s lived environment. These dimensions are not mutually exclusive. Yet Western modernity has historically imposed an ontological divide, maintaining a distinction between fine art and applied art.
Heidrun Holzfeind presents hervideo installation the time is now. (2019) which consists of two films with the Japanese shamanic improvisation duo IRO (Shizuko and Toshio Orimo). For the couple, their musical experimentation goes hand in hand with their activist involvement in the peace and anti-nuclear movement and a free-spirited way of life. They espouse an animist and pantheist worldview and vehemently oppose commercialism in all its forms. Holzfeind interlaces their music and philosophy with the ideas set in stone in Takamasa Yosizaka’s Inter-University Seminar House (1965) in Hachioji, Tokyo.
The question of how architecture works in everyday life and as a social space has long been a central concern in Heidrun Holzfeind’s works. They examine alternative ways of life outside of capitalist society, strategies of resistance and the potential for social change in everyday life.
Save the date: Ikebana workshop with Natalie Noti, May 9, 2:30-5 pm
To register, please contact hello@flowersandmoods.com or insta @flowersandmoods; more detailed info will follow.
http://www.heidrunholzfeind.com
https://elkemarhoefer.xyz/
The exhibition is organized by: Katarina Šević and Gergely László