Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed at VAN HORN: Art as a Space of Transformation

Event: Pip Culbert and Gerhard Hoehme: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed in VAN HORN, Ackerstr. 99, 40233 Düsseldorf on 10. October 2026

Date and Time

10. October 2026 12:00

Location

Düsseldorf
40 Düsseldorf, Deutschland

About this Event

Exhibitions & Museums

Mood

Relaxed

Venue Type

Inside

A dialogue of material, line, and memory at VAN HORN

With Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, VAN HORN in Düsseldorf opens an exhibition that sets two distinctive positions in post-war and contemporary art into a surprising dialogue. Pip Culbert and Gerhard Hoehme meet here for the first time in a joint presentation that forms a unique aesthetic experience from existing materials, reduced gestures, and precise spatial references.

When the Existing Begins to Speak Anew

The exhibition revolves around transformation: Culbert and Hoehme take fabrics, lines, colors, and technical materials out of their original context and give them a new artistic order. From the old emerges nothing arbitrary, but an open form of memory. Exactly therein lies the special atmosphere of the exhibition: quiet, concentrated, and simultaneously full of tension.

Pip Culbert: Deconstruction as Poetic Construction

Pip Culbert, born in 1938 and passed away in 2016, developed a language between sculpture, drawing, and architecture. According to the exhibition history, she works with shirts, bags, tents, or textiles and reduces them to seams, lines, and fragile frameworks. What was functional now appears as an open drawing in space. The examination of her works reveals a thinking that turns the inside out and makes the omitted the actual image carrier.

Her practice can be read art historically as a precise investigation of materiality and structure. Culbert transforms everyday objects into systems of tension, emptiness, and contour. This creates an artistic experience that relies less on decorative effect than on perceptual sharpness and cultural education in the best sense.

Gerhard Hoehme: Painting as an Open Energy Field

Gerhard Hoehme, a key figure of abstract art and Art Informel, was one of the formative forces of German post-war art. The ZKM biography places him as a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf; the Museum Küppersmühle describes him as a pioneer of abstraction and Art Informel in Europe. His works dissolve painting from the closed picture space and expand it into the room with strings, tubes, drawings, and plastic elements.

Hoehme's work impresses with a dense connection of gesture, line, and spatial openness. His drawings are not preliminary studies but autonomous image spaces in which thinking materializes directly. Those who view these works experience art as a field of force between surface, space, and gaze.

A Shared Attitude Across Generations

Particularly appealing about this exhibition is not the comparison of two styles but the discovery of a related attitude. Culbert and Hoehme remove their materials from the ordinary, reduce instead of overloading, and connect instead of demarcating. Both artists make visible that art arises from relation: between material and line, body and space, past and present.

This exhibition also addresses a contemporary audience seeking clear forms, sensual precision, and intellectual depth. Between minimalism, conceptual art, sculpture, and drawing, a concentrated art experience unfolds that resonates long after.

VAN HORN in Düsseldorf as a Suitable Place

VAN HORN is a place for demanding contemporary art and curated juxtapositions in Düsseldorf. The location at Ackerstraße 99 anchors the exhibition in a vibrant cultural environment where international positions, collection references, and discursive art mediation meet. For visitors, this creates an intense framework for precise work contemplation.

The presentation runs from September 4 to October 24, 2026, and opens with an opening on September 4 from 6 to 9 p.m. The visit is suitable for all who wish to experience art not only visually but in its spatial and conceptual structure.

Conclusion: This exhibition promises a quiet, wise, and very contemporary encounter with two artists who transform material into meaning. Anyone interested in abstract art, installations, drawing, and the language of space and line should experience Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed live in Düsseldorf.

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  • Website: https://van-horn.net/

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