ROOT On The Road // 2019

ROOT on the road in the land between the seas: Plein airs for the environment

From 23 - 29 June 2019

An artistic journey from Berlin to Schleswig-Holstein on the trail of our plastic waste on the Baltic Sea beaches, along the Schlei and other places in Schleswig-Holstein
The Berlin gallery ROOT is starting another tour in the "ROOT on the road" project.
Six artists from the ROOT gallery in Berlin, Juliane von Arnim, Irmgard Bornemann, Marita Czepa, Christoph Primm, Sabine Kybarth and Ute Wöllmann, drive overland in a car trailer to visit the ROOT artist Margit Buß, who lives in Eckernförde and joins the project there. They organise public plein air painting events.
All works created on site can be viewed in the trailer.
We would be very pleased about a visit on site! You can reach us at any time at
the mobile phone number 015750171807
You can find out exactly where the artists will be stopping off on the website from the beginning of June:
https://root-on-the-road.de & https://staging.projekt18-domain.com

Following the painting events, the artists' works will be exhibited:
Exhibition venues:
Sunday, 23 June from 11.00 am - 7.00 pm
Gallery CARLS ART 78, Carlshöhe 78, 24340 Eckernförde
Attention! The exhibition can only be visited on Sunday!
Gallery ROOT, Hardenbergstr. 9, 10623 Berlin
Vernissage: Tuesday, 25 June 19.00 hrs
Exhibition duration: Wednesday 26 June - Friday 28 June 2019
The exhibition is open on Wednesday 26 June and Thursday 27 June from 10.00 - 13.00 and 14.00 - 18.00 and on Friday 29 June from 10.00 - 14.00

Route plan:
Tue 18.6. Departure 10 am from Berlin to Eckernförde. Arrival there approx. 3 pm
First painting action 5 - 8 p.m. in front of the Ostsee Info Centre, Jungfernstieg 110, 24340 Eckernförde. Prior to this, 4 - 5 pm search for plastic waste on the beach in Eckernförde.
Wed 19.6. Second painting event 15.00 - 18.00 in front of the building of the Wadden Sea Protection Station, Hafenstraße 3, 25813 Husum
Thu 20.6. Third painting event 3.00 - 6.00 pm, on the grounds of the Flensburg museum shipyard, Schiffbrücke 43 - 45 , 24939 Flensburg
Fri 21.6. Fourth painting event 11.00 - 16.00 Lindaunis an der Schlei, on the grounds of Obsthof Gut Stubbe, Lindaunisbrücke 1a, 24354 Rieseby
Sat 22.6. Fifth painting event 13.00 - 16.00 Langholz/Ostsee.....am Strand...an der Ostseestraße, 24369 Waabs/Langholz, Ostseestraße 27

The route is due to the artistic approach of Marita Czepa, who often paints in and in front of places that are facing drastic changes due to human activity. Marita Czepa is concerned with the preservation of nature and with it the preservation of human existence on this earth. In her works, she thematises the threat posed to nature by mankind. As a consequence of this attitude, she has not bought any more paper in the past four years, but has worked her beguiling realistic drawings and colourful watercolours exclusively on found or used materials: Paper bags, torn posters, cardboard boxes found on the street, old and used envelopes, old index cards, etc. This combination has resulted in haunting works that are characterised above all by their artistic virtuosity. Ute Wöllmann transfers structures in nature into painterly and graphic structures. She is interested in the emotional excitement that observing nature can trigger in people. Inconspicuous starting points in nature, such as the view of undergrowth and meadows, are intended to achieve a similar excitement in the viewer through the beauty of the painting, as occurs, for example, when watching sunsets. During the first "ROOT on the road" tour, Ute Wöllmann also began to paint plein-air with 2m x 1.60m oil paintings directly in front of nature. She realised that the visual density of direct observation on location can be translated into a painterly density. However, the paintings are completed in the concentrated atmosphere of the studio. Irmgard Bornemann lives and works in Dannenberg in the Wendland region. She has always captured the willows of her homeland in countless sketches. The theme of the tree can be found in her latest paintings in the form of bark collages directly in the impasto oil painting. In doing so, she confronts the crusty structure and, in part, the colourfulness of the natural bark material with the artificial colourfulness of a cadmium gel. With the impasto colour body of the oil paint, she imitates the physicality of the tree bark; it is sometimes no longer possible to distinguish between the structure of the bark and the structure of the paint. Where does painting end? Where does relief begin? The surface texture of her paintings is very exciting and leads to new visual experiences. Juliane von Arnim devotes most of her work to nature in the form of landscape paintings or views of plants. She traces the unusual in the familiar. Strange colour and light moods are the hallmark of her pictures. The image details and lighting of the rural scenarios, deserted landscapes and places appear unusual, especially as her attention is primarily focussed on special buildings and lonely farmsteads, which convey a peculiar atmosphere of tense tranquillity. Margit Buß works with alcyd resin paints, acrylic paints and resin. She works processually with the independence and momentum of the colours. In countless experiments, she has discovered how they react against and with each other. Every new experiment in the studio is noted down so that it can be called up when needed. In this way, she is able to repeat exactly what was once created by chance in order to make it appear as chance again in the painting. She initially lets the colour have its way and then lets it work for her. The texture and production method of a painting, the materiality of the colour substances, are the focus of her attention. The high-gloss, smooth surface of the painting forms an exciting contrast to the bubbling streams of colour and makes us aware of the elemental force and sensuality of colours. Christoph Primm's strength lies in the tension between colour and structure. He layers undiluted colour to create complex compositions and makes the painterly itself the object of contemplation. At first glance, his paintings are gestural abstractions. At second glance, the paintings are also symbolic. The open pictorial forms activate the experience of the colour presentation and the painting process. Sabine Kybarth brilliantly unites intense informal and gestural painting on the one hand and precise realistic painting on the other to create a new artistic standpoint. She has found much more than just the union of the two poles by introducing a new protagonist: Our consumer and commodity world with its seductive displays. At first it was only the viewer's gaze through the rain-soaked shop windows into the constructed scenery, until in the end the mannequins themselves become active in a new role as representatives of the people in these pictures.

The gallery was already on the road with ROOT in 2018 and 2014. 2018 on the trail of the Castor transports in Wendland. The artists organised plein-air painting campaigns in front of the salt mine in Gorleben and in the Elbe valley floodplains. In 2014, they travelled through the Schorfheide nature reserve in the Uckermark region in search of the planned power lines from the North Sea to southern Germany. The artists also met with representatives of local citizens' initiatives on site. The events attracted a great deal of interest from the press.