Future exhibition
Arne Quinze – Secret Beauty
22.09.2024 – 24.11.2024
Arne Quinze is one of those contemporary artists who engage intensively with nature. In one of his statements he says: “Since I have been living on this planet, 30 percent of the natural and animal world has already been destroyed.” In his art, he is interested in the lost ecosystem that is increasingly threatened by growing cities. That’s why for him, who started out as a street artist, questions about urbanity and nature are also the starting point for his considerations.
Arne Quinze became known primarily for his unstable, stable building constructions that looked like temporary dwellings or complicated, branched structures created by nature itself, which only seemed to hold together because they were interwoven. He implemented such constructs in urban spaces and thereby created reminiscences of nature itself, which is probably the most imaginative and clever builder par excellence, but also of prehistoric, archaic constructs for housing. However, spectacular constructions were also created within an almost untouched natural context, for example “Uchronia”, 2006, in the Nevada desert, which he had burned down at the end of the exhibition.
Nature and gardens are essential for the artist and the only significant source of debate – especially in a time when nature and biodiversity are threatened, but also by wars and natural disasters. Arne Quinze seems to fight tirelessly against this and increases this in increasingly colorful and seemingly exuberant sculptures and paintings. The ecosystem that Arne Quinze built around his house a few years ago has become his laboratory for his paintings and sculptures. The experimental room is characterized by a large variety of plant species and a wide range of colors.
The artist and gardener disappears effortlessly and escapes into this secret garden. There he finds refuge from the thunderous cacophony of everyday traffic and the gray and monotonous city life of today. By creating and growing this thoroughly balanced and natural art, Quinze expresses his distaste for gray and monoculture while striving to inject fragments of his radiant laboratory into our cities, where his sculptures become catalysts of vibrant diversity. Life and decay – the two sides of nature’s coin – serve as a constant inspiration for Quinze, who has recently created works that focus even more on ephemeral matter as a breeding ground for new life. In Japanese, the acceptance of this transience is referred to as “Mono no Aware” and is crucial to Arne Quinze’s recent nature research.
For his exhibition in Koblenz he is planning a comprehensive projection of his urban projects as well as a series of large-format paintings. He will temporarily set up two sculptures outside and another one in line with the Ludwig Museum on the Ehrenbreitstein fortress plateau.
The exhibition is (probably) supported by the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation.
Arne Quinze: Wildflower Field, 200 x 400, © Dave Bruel