Let's go for a stroll through culture: now the Munich art autumn begins!

It is considered to be the start of the Munich Art Autumn: the Open Art. It will take place for the 33rd time from September 24th to 26th.

More than 60 galleries and museums open their doors.

Also the Stefan Vogdt gallery at the Hofgarten.

A visit.

It's like a keyhole.

If you look into it, you see another time.

And at the same time in our own.

That is the highlight of Ola Kolehmainen's series of works “Back to Square Black”, which can be seen from today until October 22nd in the Stefan Vogdt Gallery.

In his color-intensive pictures, located between architecture, photography and painting, the Finnish artist conveys that the present always rests on the past.

On the shoulders of giants.

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The artist dyed an archive recording of the Cathedral of Siena in red.

As a result, the architectural elements emerge more intensely.

© Photo: Galerie Stefan Vogdt

The art consultant Sonja Lechner will present the works at the vernissage this evening.

And secretly hopes to inspire a few collectors of contemporary art to take a look back.

“For many who collect contemporary art, there is only one now - as if it had come out of nowhere.

Every artist refers to our cultural treasure, whether consciously or unconsciously, ”she emphasizes.

Ola Kolehmainen connects the past and the present

Kolehmainen plays with it. In “Siena dark Red” (2020), for example, this picture to which the key is your own eyes. The artist used a black and white archive recording of the Cathedral of Siena as a basis. By coloring the central aisle deep red, the original lines, shapes, and all of the architectural elements also seem to emerge more intensely. The aura of the room seems to be visible. That's what has been on the minds of the 57-year-old for more than 20 years: getting to the heart of it all. Kolehmainen has been lying in wait around the world with his camera for so long, photographing buildings from hundreds of perspectives, until he has discovered the essentials for himself. He is not interested in the cathedral in its entirety, nor in the function of the building or the sheer size. He is interested in the soul.

And while he was concentrating on the details in earlier works, he is now superimposing them digitally - thus creating something new.

The past becomes the present.

Images of a bath architecture from Seville, built in the 12th century, seem to be torn from a work by Lyonel Feininger through this superimposition of the photos.

Or the Mallorcan landscape: first photographed by Kolehmainen, printed on paper with an extreme structure and then photographed again.

This gives the photo a surreal feel.

Like a mirage, half in the now, half from another time.

The Open Art invites you to take an art walk

A bit like what the past year and a half felt like.

In which people discovered walking for themselves.

You can do that again this weekend at Open Art.

And discover everything the art market has to offer along the way.

Felicitas Boos, who runs the gallery with her father, fondly remembers a couple from the catering trade who often passed their shop windows during the lockdown.

They looked at one picture again and again.

“Then one day they called and said, let's buy this now.

The situation is catastrophic, but that's exactly why, ”says Boos with a smile.

Art as an encouragement - works.

At that time like today.

Until October 22nd in the Galerie Stefan Vogdt, Galeriestraße 2, Munich;

Telephone 089/271 68 57. Further information is available here