POTSDAM.- This year marks the twenty-first edition of the Rohkunstbau exhibition. Themed “apocalypse” and set against the historic backdrop of Schloss Roskow in the District of Potsdam-Mittelmark, the exhibition presents nine artists and one artistic duo from eight nations.

The notion of transition serves as the focus of the examination of apocalypse. Every end brings a new beginning. This choice of theme for the XXI. Rohkunstbau is loosely tied to Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. But instead of being an exact interpretation of Götterdämmerung, the fourth and final part of the Ring, the exhibition draws on Wagner’s notion of an end and subsequent beginning. Wagner has served as inspiration for Rohkunstbau’s exhibition since 2011. In previous exhibitions artists have been invited to address themes of Power (2011), Morals (2013), and Revolution (2014), now followed by Apocalypse for 2015.

The topic of apocalypse suits this location well. Hans-Hermann von Katte, a member of the von Katte family that erected the palace in 1723, was hanged in 1730 on the order of King Friedrich I after von Katte had helped the king’s son escape from his father. The executioner’s sword hung in the palace until 1945; the artist Christiane Möbus references this in her work.

The participating artists approach the theme of downfall and subsequent new beginning from vastly different perspectives. The artistic investigations revolve around themes of family, power, societal relationships, natural disasters, or the cycle of life.

Sandra Boeschenstein’s drawings are impressive not only for their technical skill and philosophical underpinnings but also for their poetic and unique formal qualities. For the Rohkunstbau exhibition the artist has developed a twenty-nine-part series of drawings titled Apokalypse. 29 zarte Leibesvisiten (Apocalypse. 29 Bodily Visits). Here she relates the apocalypse to a variety of phenomena including the Big Bang, butter, courage, cows, and the activity of “digging.” Visible in one of the images is a “reset” button, a switch for a new beginning. Floating above this is the apocalypse, in the form of a teeming swarm, and written on the lower edge of the image: “ambitious apocalypse is amazed by the compactness of a reset button.” In her works Sandra Boeschenstein questions the nature of the transitional moment, and through drawing she engages in a search for the essence of the apocalypse.

In her works the Moscow-based artist Olga Chernysheva presents post-Soviet society and the lasting impacts of this era. Chernysheva contrasts images of the rich and beautiful that have permeated the media since the collapse of the Soviet Union with the traditional Russian or Soviet interest in the lives of ordinary people. In drawings, photography, and videos she focuses attention on these people, who for various reasons seem to be “invisible.” In the film Trashman, the artist presents a view of the shift in living conditions in Moscow, which are shaped by influences such as mass culture and worker migration. In the film young man from Central Asia is standing at the exit of a movie theatre in a Moscow cinema as the credits are rolling. In his hands he is holding open a garbage bag for moviegoers to dispose of their drinking cups and other trash.

however this could be the beginning 1 + 2 is the title of both paintings by Philip Grözinger. The impasto-style paintings depict an apocalyptic—or perhaps post-apocalyptic—world, which might also pass for an amusement park in disarray. Abstract beings and strange flying objects from a bygone future buzz about a trace of white paint that spreads out over the image surface. With an almost surrealist reverie and an astute, routine casualness Grözinger addresses in his paintings the ever-looming end of mankind— or perhaps what comes after the apocalypse.

For her installations Leiko Ikemura creates a dialogue between elements of film, painting, and sculpture in order to address aspects of rebirth and threat. The film Cloudgraphy shows Mt. Fuji in footage dating from the 1920s, which was recorded by the Japanese scientist Masanao Abe. The researcher was primarily interested in the cloud formations that incessantly encircle the mountain and exist in a state of constant flux. Leiko Ikemura situates the dramatic shapes of the clouds, their constant formation and disappearance, in relationship to the sculpture memento mori. The body of the recumbent figure, more a being than a girl, hints at its dissolution, containing within itself the instant of transitioning into earth, into landscape. Leiko Ikemura augments this interrelationship of film and sculpture by incorporating the a site-specific element of air. A curtain, billowed by gusts of air, is a further sculptural element in the spatial situation created by the artist in Roskow.

The Croatian artist duo Damir Žižić / Kristian Kozul has been working together on joint artistic projects since 2013. For Rohkunstbau they present the installation #SUMMERSUNLOVE. Commercial summer techno music emanates from eight large seashells. The objects are spread around the room in a gray-on-gray aesthetic. Loudspeakers are set into the openings of the seashells, out of which ulcerous and bulging construction foam also emerges, thereby negating the possibility of the perfectly designed object. The sounds played in the installation are ostensibly similar to those heard on the beaches of Mediterranean—booming sounds that promise an easy and carefree summer.

This promise of lightheartedness draws crowds of tourists every year to countries like Croatia, but the seduction on offer is diametrically opposed to the country’s actual situation: an instable job market, poor living conditions, and the privatization of public spaces do not fit the image that is designed to attract tourists. With #SUMMERSUNLOVE the duo Žižić/Kozul draw on this phenomenon of seduction and failure and create with their installation a space in which the viewer is exposed to a paradoxical world of marketing and bargain prices and immersed in a nerve-racking soundscape.

Silver metal sheen dominates the work of Philipp Lachenmann—inspired by the military history of the von Katte family, which erected Schloss Roskow at the beginning of the eighteenth century and whose members held high ranks in the army under successive kings. A military choreography is drawn on an image surface covered in silver leaf. First, second, and third movements—the drawing is a blueprint for how soldiers line up behind one another in various formations for important events. Lachenmann juxtaposes the calculation of military movements with three polyhedrons painted in silver oil paint. But in the paint coating these mathematical bodies shows cracks that spread out over these shapes in an irregular fashion. With his work Lachenmann opens up a space between the canvas and the polyhedrons, in which viewers are forces to situate themselves among elements of representation and control, mathematical bodies, and a cracked surface.

For Apocalypse, Dominik Lejman presents a video mural and a work that entail combinations typical of his oeuvre; videos are projected onto paintings. The videos that he developed show helicopters hovering over a setting that artist does not define in detail. Lejman’s “video-painting” shows ballet-dancers performing a sequence of movement that recall an explosion. In earlier works, Lejman has dealt with the (im)possibilities of political art, or with architecture and how it influences people’s movements.

In her multi-part artwork for XXI. Rohkunstbau, Christiane Möbus positions an old camping table in the middle of the space, on top on which is placed a funnel-shaped wicker chair. On the ground beneath the table are five pumpkins cast in aluminum. Titled Heinrich VIII, Christiane Möbus’ installation presents, in addition to the throne ensemble, three tiled stoves in states of disrepair or assembly, a replica of the von Katte executioner’s sword, and a photograph of the painter Sonderborg. In creating this rich combination of objects and images, Christiane Möbus develops a visual narrative in which she responds to themes including the fate of the von Katte family, which was shaped by the execution of Hans-Hermann von Katte in 1730.

Artist Miguel Rothschild suspends a three-by-three meter expanse of fabric from hundreds of nylon threads. Titled Die Flut (The Flood), the fabric depicts a churning sea and has been produced by Rothschild specifically for Rohkunstbau. Miguel Rothschild represents what is seemingly intangible in the form of an object; the viewer can walk around the waves, observing them from both below and above. Nylon threads form the undulating water’s surface and are suspended from the center of the space. As told in the Bible, the flood represents both the end of a world that has come apart at the seams as well as a moment that makes a new beginning both necessary and possible.

In the garden of Schloss Roskow the British sculptor Daniel Silver presents the sculpture The Artist, His Father and His Son. A child sits on the shoulders of a person, but it is unclear whether this individual is the artist himself or the father. The formal details of the figures are rough and the surface irregular: furrows, scratches, and bulges are arranged chaotically, but individual limbs or facial features can still be made out. By means of this surface treatment, the physical boundaries between the persons portrayed are erased, and they merge into a unified being, into a whole. These formal aspects are applicable to investigations of birth and death—apparent beginnings and endpoints that merge into one another in the interplay of generations. The individual events combine to form a larger whole, an evolving narrative.

Philip Grözinger is producing a series of linoleum prints exclusively for Rohkunstbau XXI. with motifs that respond to the paintings shown in the exhibition. The prints have been produced in numbered editions of 50 and will be available for purchase as of June 20, 2015. All prints are signed and were produced by Grözinger by hand.