‘Yummikraut’ brings together twenty-two artists studying under painter Kerstin Drechsel, guest professor in fine arts at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and curator of this exhibition of new work, whose first UK solo exhibition, ‘Jan-Holger’, was at Vane in 2008. Over the period of a week the artists will come to Newcastle to install and open their exhibition at Vane, followed by visits to local galleries and the fine art departments of both Newcastle University and Northumbria University, with reciprocal visits by students from both universities to the exhibition at Vane. The aim of the exhibition is to contribute to the dialogue around contemporary painting as well as to encourage dialogue between artists from different countries.

In the art world, the German town of Kassel is best known for Dokumenta, arguably the most important international exhibition of contemporary art, which takes place every five years. Appropriately for such an important location, the city’s Kunsthochschule, part of the Universität Kassel, has an internationally oriented art department with national and international artists and theorists regularly invited to lecture.

Whilst the focus of most of the students in Drechsel’s class is painting, their work also encompasses many other media, including installation, photography, film, and performance. As befits the international focus of the university, students include those from the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Korea, and China, as well as from across Germany.

‘Yummikraut’ spans a wide range of contemporary painting, with work that runs the gamut of media, including embroidery, photography, text, sculpture, wallpaper, watercolour, oil paint, lithography, and video. Psychology, anthropology, architecture, ritual, gender politics, and mass media are all explored and used. Art history – from traditional portraiture through surrealism, pop and conceptualism, from the decorative to the figurative and the abstract, Western and Eastern art – all are rummaged through, dissected and reconfigured.

Artists: Benita Hahn; Anna Lena Kreysing; Sven Krolczik; Miriam Ksoll; Lisa Kühne; Jea-Yun Lee; Anna-Maria Meyer; Susanne Mögling; Elina Richter; Lennart Rieder; Larissa Rudolph; Erik Schäfer; Miglena Stankeva; Martha Thum; Jens Volbach; Thorleif Wang; Sarah Wegner; Florian Wolf; Sarah Wolf; Qiuyang Wu; Peng Xia; Tetyana Zolotopupova

Curator: Kerstin Drechsel

Vane
Kings House
Forth Banks
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 3PA
UK