THE ART JOURNAL FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURE, ART HISTORY, AND THOUGHT

A Giraffe Changes the View

“Goldfischglastheorien” at the Alte Handelsschule brings six artistic positions together in a display that makes their differences productive.

AKTUELL

DOKUNST

10/3/20263 min read

Susu Gorth, Geraffe, 2026. Foam, bamboo rods, bicycle inner tube and chicken wire; listed in the catalogue as not for sale. Installation view of “Goldfischglastheorien,” Kunstraum ars avanti, Alte Handelsschule. Photo: DOKUNST

A giraffe catches the eye first. Susu Gorth’s Geraffe (2026) stands in the lofty exhibition room of Leipzig’s Alte Handelsschule, in front of arched windows that lend its long neck an almost architectural scale. Foam, bamboo rods, a bicycle inner tube and chicken wire form an animal whose surface breaks into cubes, loops and hanging strips. I found this shift between immediate recognition and closer scrutiny particularly compelling: from a distance, there is an animal; up close, its shape becomes a multitude of separate parts. Tomorrow, ars avanti’s exhibition “Goldfischglastheorien” closes, bringing to an end a presentation of work by Silke Bachmann, Louise Bauer, Susu Gorth, Florian Haller, Hanne Kroll and Kerstin Skringer from Leipzig and Munich. For me, its chief achievement lies in the way these different works can be read in relation to one another across the room.

The title draws on an analogy in Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s The Grand Design: a goldfish sees the outside world through the curved glass of its bowl and might construct an internally consistent model of the world on that basis. This is an enticing, though also rather convenient, premise for an art exhibition. The claim that everyone has their own reality tells us little about the quality of a painting or sculpture. The idea becomes interesting when the works actually unsettle our perception. Gorth’s Geraffe does so through the peculiar divergence between recognisable form and material: the familiar outline persists, while the soft, intricate surface interrupts any expectation of smooth animal skin. The eye has to revise its first certainty.

The arrangement extends that experience. Alongside the sculptural restlessness of Geraffe, geometric repetitions, blurred forms of light and rhythmic fields of colour hold their own on the wall. The spacing preserves the works’ independence without severing their connections. Elsewhere, a particularly revealing juxtaposition places a large work with a dark red ground and an inverted pink bodily figure beside a tiny painting of a bird. Small pale sculptures occupy a plinth in front. Here, we have to step back, move closer again and lower our gaze; size alone does not determine attention. The little bird painting beside a tall panelled double door likewise finds a counterpart in the architecture. For me, this is the exhibition’s curatorial strength: it gives looking a rhythm, rather than simply gathering six positions under a shared concept.

The Alte Handelsschule provides a remarkable setting for such an encounter: a former school building now housing studios and exhibition spaces, where artistic production and public attention meet within the same premises. For international audiences who know Leipzig chiefly through its celebrated painters and galleries, this offers another way into the city’s contemporary art. The inclusion of positions from Munich also opens that local context outwards. “Goldfischglastheorien” supplies no definitive answer to the question of reality; more persuasive is the precision with which it makes differences perceptible. When it closes tomorrow, 4 October, the standard it leaves us with is the attention a carefully considered display can secure even for a small, initially unassuming work.