A Timely Dialogue

The work is a joint conceptual painting installation by Antje Majewski and Hasso Weiß Ehrenwerth. Their time together at weißensee kunsthochschule berlin lasted only about eight months in 2010. A structural problem within the institution became a bitter memory for both of them; it is addressed in the letters on display. Out of this experience emerged a dialogue about painting as a discipline which they continue to this day. For both of them, the invitation to Majewski to participate in "Explosive Futures" came at the right time. It makes it possible to bring together two issues in a single work: painting as an artistic and curricular discipline, and the institution itself. Both artists paint with strictly controlled brushwork and a naturalistic tendency. From a queer-feminist perspective, they understand this approach as a political commitment: it refuses the gesture of the intuitively working painter who expresses "himself" — the male, white, heterosexual painter. Their conversations gave rise to a shared desire to paint, at least once, as if formal "freedom" existed. Natis had already created the heteronym Hasso in order to paint against his usual practice, with an interest in fragments of the body emerging surrealistically from the unconscious. In their collaboration, these spontaneously emerging forms respond to Majewski's abstract-gestural marks and colours. The canvas has exactly the dimensions of a window in the Kunsthalle and can only be viewed from outside. On the reverse side, visible from inside the building, are displayed Majewski's invitation letter to Natis, his reply accepting the invitation as Hasso, and Hasso's fictitious master's degree certificate.

A Timely Dialogue, oil paint, acrylic, and pigments on canvas, 185 × 270 cm, 2026

Fictional Diploma Certificate, 2026