Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed at VAN HORN: Material Art in Düsseldorf


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When Material Tells a Story: Pip Culbert and Gerhard Hoehme at VAN HORN
This exhibition in Düsseldorf opens a concentrated art experience between reduction, space, and memory. Under the title Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, the works of Pip Culbert and Gerhard Hoehme meet for the first time in a joint presentation. Both artists transform found materials into open visual and spatial contexts, making visible how something radically new emerges from the existing.
A Dialogue about Structure, Trace, and Transformation
VAN HORN presents two positions side by side that seem different at first glance but are supported by a remarkable closeness. Culbert works with shirts, bags, tents, and fabrics; Hoehme with color, strings, plastic tubes, and drawings. In both oeuvres, the focus shifts from the object to the form, from function to perception. Thus, an exhibition emerges that makes materiality experientially tangible not illustratively but as an independent aesthetic experience.
Pip Culbert: Textile Fragments as Open Drawings
Pip Culbert, born in 1938 in Newcastle upon Tyne and passed away in 2016, is known for her reduced, conceptually precise work. She cuts fabrics and clothing back so that seams, lines, and fragile frameworks remain. Everyday objects become floating structures between sculpture, drawing, and architecture. This form of Deconstruction and Reconstruction combines strict clarity with poetic lightness and directs attention to the relationship between inside and outside, shell and emptiness, function and presence.
Gerhard Hoehme: Painting as an Open Field
Gerhard Hoehme, a key figure of abstract post-war art and Informel, early on freed the panel painting from its closure. His works with strings, color, and plastic elements understand the picture as an energetic field that extends into space and includes the viewer. His drawings also appear here not as preliminary studies, but as autonomous works with high concentration. In Düsseldorf, the city of his artistic origin, this examination of the works gains special sharpness.
Spatial Effect, Light, and Curatorial Precision
The atmosphere of the exhibition thrives on the tension between restraint and intensity. Lines connect rather than limit, materials recall their origins while simultaneously dissolving from them. It is precisely in this movement that curation unfolds its strength: it shows not a mere juxtaposition but a mentally precise relationship between two generations that have never collaborated yet share a common artistic attitude. The result is a quiet, concentrated art experience with high formal density.
Why Visiting is Worthwhile
Those who appreciate contemporary art, abstract painting, object art, and installation spaces will find here an exhibition with great intellectual clarity and sensory presence. The interplay of textile, color, string, and space opens new perspectives on art history, material aesthetics, and cultural education. A visit to VAN HORN is worthwhile for all who wish to not only observe art but to experience it in its spatial and intellectual tension.
Conclusion: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed impressively demonstrates how a surprisingly contemporary dialogue emerges from existing materials, traces, and forms. This exhibition invites visitors to experience the subtle power of reduction and transformation live in Düsseldorf.
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- Website: https://van-horn.net/






