So Close, Yet So Far

PEAC Museum
Freiburg, Germany
26 April to 23 August 26

With the exhibition titled So Close, Yet So Far PEAC Museum presents a new selection of works from the Paul Ege Art Collection. The exhibition is devoted to the charged relationship between proximity and distance, and spans a wide range of media—from sculpture, photography, and painting to sound, installation, and video.The dynamics of proximity and distance generate tension—whether in everyday life, in relationships or in art. The selected works exert a seductive pull, only to withdraw from the viewer at the very last moment. This physical presence is counterbalanced by a level of meaning that defies clear interpretation. The works resist the desire to be fully grasped and instead remain impenetrable, distant. The exhibition proposes viewing this opacity as a productive quality. It slows the act of looking, keeps meanings open, and enables a form of relation that does not aim at resolution or clarity but at a continual negotiation of proximity and distance.

So Close, Yet So Far is part of an exhibition series that continually re-contextualizes the Paul Ege Art Collection. The aim of this active curatorial practice is to establish a lasting dialogue between pioneers of art history and contemporary (abstract) art practices. Artists in the exhibition: Stephan Baumkötter, Astha Butail, Sebastian Dannenberg, Elger Esser, Johannes Geccelli, Lori Hersberger, Myriam Holme, Piotr Iwicki, On Kawara, Thomas Kitzinger, Takehito Koganezawa, Brigitte Kowanz, Moritz Neuhoff, Natalia Stachon, Dieter Villinger.