On May 14, 2022, the premiere of the Oberammergau Passion Play will finally take place.
In the Oberammergau Museum, the new exhibition "(IM)MATERIAL - Material, Body, Passion" is now making people want to see the spectacle.
The perfect attunement!
It must be the fresh mountain air.
The townswoman thinks as she walks back to the Oberammergau train station.
What are they doing here!
The local passion theater is world famous;
but many a tourist overlooks the fact that the small, very fine Oberammergau Museum always creates something special.
Many pass by carelessly.
This may be due to the neighboring ice cream parlor or the furniture store across the street with the pretty serviettes.
Maybe also on the inconspicuous facade.
Inside, wood carving art is hidden at the highest level.
Alone: How do you get that to men, women and children in today's art world, in which shrill and loud far too often trumps content?
How excited one is to take a close look, to delight in topics that only seem old-fashioned, such as tradition,
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The Oberammergau Museum in “normal condition”.
The house will remain cloaked until October 2022.
© Hutter
Constanze Werner has the solution.
The museum director is a dynamic woman who is easy to imagine scrambling up the surrounding mountains.
She is just as dynamic about her museum.
Werner doesn't just want to receive people who come because that's part of a visit to Oberammergau.
According to the motto: a bit of mountains, a lot of beer, pork knuckle and Kaiserschmarrn, and finally something with art.
She always comes up with new ways to inspire enthusiasm for her collection treasures.
She has outdone herself with the show that starts tomorrow.
Museum director Constanze Werner: "Covering leads to visibility"
How to get people to take a closer look?
You do it like any femme fatale who knows: cover yourself with revealing clothing – that draws more attention to you than your naked body.
Concealment leads to visibility.
Sounds contradictory?
Let's take a few more steps on the village street back to the ice cream parlor and observe – with a bag of vanilla ice cream in hand it's a pleasure to do it – the children who have just taken a seat there.
A boy points to the museum with a sticky finger.
"What is that?" Yes, what is that?
Whoever approaches recognizes it.
Squares covered with fabric.
They are the costumes of the Passion 2000 and 2010. Hundreds, almost 1000. Each record is a work of art in itself, which can also be bought.
Put together by five artists from the region to create an installation,
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"We are connected": The Oberammergau artist Klaus Vogt collects the hair of the Passion Theater actors - and uses it to create art.
© Oberammergau Museum
Christo meets Christi: You can no longer walk past this building without paying attention, it pulls you inside.
Also because of the ropes that hang along the facade towards the entrance.
Klaus Vogt made them.
For 22 years, the Oberammergau artist has been collecting hair that the actors are finally allowed to cut off after the end of the Passion Play, matting it into ropes - and thus creating symbolic works.
A hairy thing.
Because that has something creepy, also repulsive.
hair continues to grow a little after death;
their roots contain all of a person's DNA.
Cut off your hair, but it also makes you think of concentration camps, shaved heads, cruelty.
With suffering, with passion.
The DNA of an entire village is symbolically woven into the artwork
Werner is aware of the effect that this can have on visitors and subtly uses Klaus Vogt's work, which is intended to symbolically weave the DNA of an entire village, into the exhibition.
The hairy rope leads you through the rooms like a red thread, winding its way along the walls and ceiling, transforming its shape into that of a strand of DNA, sometimes into writing: "We are connected" is what it says.
The show also holds back with words.
Only one slogan per room, otherwise the art alone should have an effect on people (there is a flyer with information at the cash desk).
A ghost room on the first floor.
Showcases, chests of drawers and wall clocks are wrapped in white lining materials, also leftovers from the Passionstheater's sewing workshop.
But there are a few gaping holes in them, revealing the filigree wood carvings.
The others can be guessed from afar through the shimmering fabric that encases the showcase.
And is automatically attracted, wants to take a closer look with the eyes.
A ticking in the background.
memento mori.
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Redemption: walk-in video installation at the end of the show in the Oberammergau Museum
© kjk
With these tricks, with this game of visibility and disguise, Werner manages that even those who previously had nothing to do with arts and crafts are suddenly mesmerized by them.
A room further on, the veiling is taken to extremes, the figures of saints become mummies.
And, wrapped in uniform, they look like a gray mass.
It becomes clear that we individualists are all the same in the end.
Our feelings unite us.
Sadness, anger, suffering, happiness.
It doesn't matter what century we were born in.
This is shown particularly impressively by the combination of the bleeding Christ, set in spruce at the beginning of the 19th century, and Hermann Bigelmayr's "Blood Drops" made of lime wood, from 2014.
Everything is heading towards the last room where salvation awaits.
Everyone senses for themselves what is going on.
And then stumble out again, towards the train station, back to the big city.
Filled with mountain air - and a show that has a lasting effect.
Until October 16, 2022, Dorfstraße 8 in Oberammergau, further information is available here
