High school students give an insight into the Corona mental life

Created: 01/17/2022, 15:05

P-seminar in front of Emil Lembke's four elements (from left): teacher Svantje Munzert, Emil Lembke, Alexis Georgoulis, Moritz Bach, Luisa Güntsch, Antonia Langguth, Luise Nowag, Cosima Katzenberger, Amelie Seidel, Clara von Hund and Johanna Urbig.

© Andrea Jaksch

With the exhibition of their self-portraits, students of the P-Seminar at the Otto-von-Taube-Gymnasium give an impressive insight into their mental life during the Corona crisis.

Gauting – Inspired by Bill Viola, Emil Lembke (17) presents himself in the four elements in his installation. In her successful self-portrait “inside outside”, based on Arnulf Rainer's example, Amelie Seidel conveys what makes her human. "With these self-portraits, graduates of the P-Seminar don't show embellished shots like on Instagram or Facebook," emphasized Swantje Munzert, teacher at the Otto-von-Taube-Gymnasium Gauting, at the vernissage on Friday evening in the small hall of the Bosco. Rather, the high school graduates would have spent a year dealing with their personal art historical role models.

In a process of "self-reflection", the works of the young people were created according to the motto of the American artist Bill Viola: "Art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible". In his video installation on the four elements "The elements are in our nature Emil Lembke implemented this idea perfectly.

With small videos as a blindfold, the young person stages himself between trickling sand as earth, in the blazing fire, in the wind and in the splashing water of a summer's day.

Otto-von-Taube-Gymnasium: The student implements the style of Caspar-David-Friedrich

Johanna Urbig skilfully continued the style of the Caspar David Friedrich drawing "Self-Portrait with Supported Arm" from 1802 in the here and now: the high school student draws thoughtfully on the laptop, lonely while homeschooling. As the last picture in the melancholic series, the viewer looks helplessly at an empty workplace. Antonia Langguth was fascinated by Gabriele Münter's "Self-Portrait": Using the difficult technique behind glass, where every brushstroke has to be in oil, the young artist succeeded in creating a self-portrait with multi-layered luminosity. Following the example set by the Art Nouveau artist Gustav Klimt, Moritz Bach presents himself as a colored “superhero” in the spotlight in his felt-tip pen comic drawing “The Development”; underneath he is hidden in his former self as a child.

Salvador Dalì was Luise Nowag's role model.

The result: On "Luise in Spheres" the young artist painted her astonished facial expression perfectly in acrylic.

Cosima Katzenberger skilfully created her large-format black-and-white “Self-Portrait” from 2825 pixels, inspired by Chuck Closes' “Self-Portrait”.

Luisa Güntsch calls her self-portrait in front of the Gauting town hall "a spirit of optimism": "I'm conveying the interest of the young generation of the Fridays for Future movement in political participation," she says.

The violet color of her portrait symbolizes criticism of the conventional, the departure of young people into a climate-neutral, socially just society.

Image of schoolgirl to represent transience of life

The successful acrylic painting by Clara von Hund is oppressive: Inspired by Arnold Böcklin, the young person shows herself in her self-portrait, staring at her mobile phone, next to the skull of "fiddled death".

With her work, she wanted to vividly depict the transience of life "where media consumption is becoming less and less important" and to stimulate thinking about "carpe diem", said the young artist to applause from the audience.

Francis Bacon, in turn, animated Alexis Georgoulis to create his successful acrylic triptych: the young person presents his face in different shades of color, from vulnerable black to deeply emotional red, “where the world is on fire”.

An absolute highlight of the exhibition is the fascinating large-format chalk drawing with a pastel stippling brush “Inside outside” by Amelie Seidel: In the style of Arnold Rainer, the young artist has skillfully portrayed herself realistically with a questioning look – and painted over: “What makes a person out?

His story?

His strengths?” asks Seidel with her first-rate self-portrait.

The only snag of this exhibition worth seeing: The self-portraits only hung in the small hall of the Boschetto until Sunday.