2.8. – 1.9.2024
Point Your Toes and Look Alive

Venue:
Weserhalle Berlin, Weserstraße 56

Web:
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Juno Rothaug’s first solo exhibition at Weserhalle, titled “Point your Toes and Look Alive,” presents a series of new works by the Hamburg-based artist. The exhibited pieces range from large canvases spanning almost three meters to more intimate, smaller works in Rothaug’s characteristic style. Embedded in the use of strong colors and contrast, her work fluidly oscillates between abstraction and figuration. The artist’s energetic process translates into the vibrant quality of the composition, the variation of textures, and the interplay of depth and flatness she creates throughout the work.

Her artistic journey begins with a figurative concept, often inspired by art history. Initial compositions are sketched roughly, with a focus on the dynamics and relationships between elements rather than precise details. Rothaug explains, “My references come from a continuous engagement with art and art history and a mode of collecting. It’s less about processing specific eras and more about engaging in dialogue and exploring painting. Artistic practice is inherently linked to references; it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Working with art historical references is just a method, not the content of my work. Every artist connects with the past and present because we often try to solve problems addressed by others before us.”

In her latest body of work, Rothaug ventures beyond mere historical references, forging her own creatures and worlds. Experimenting with contemporary tools, such as 3D modeling programs like Blender, has broadened her practice and allowed her to pre-encrypt references and bring to life new, imaginative forms. Through this balance between revealing and concealing, the works engage the spectator in a metaphorical game of hide and seek. Tempted to use titles such as “Angsthasen Unite,” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Very Old Man,” or the title of the show “Point your Toes and Look Alive” as clues for what to find or look for in the works, one’s imagination is sparked to uncover the layers and possibly find something completely unexpected. Familiar shapes emerge and vanish, much like watching clouds; the focus shifts, with some images becoming clearer only to transform into another motif.

Work by Clara Schmidt as part of the Annual Exhibition 2025; photo: Tim Albrecht

Annual Exhibition 2026 at the HFBK Hamburg

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Cemile Sahin, ROAD RUNNER, 2025, installation view at Esther Schipper, Berlin; photo: © Andrea Rossetti, Courtesy of Cemile Sahin and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul

Writing in Future

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View into the auditorium of HFBK Hamburg; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

Welcome to HFBK Hamburg: New semester, new faces

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Opening of the Graduate Show 2025; photo: Sinje Hasheider

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Pablo Torres Gómez, Earths's Ears, 2025; photo: Pablo Torres Gómez

Doing a PhD at the HFBK Hamburg

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Maria Ignatenko, false movements, 2024, work in progress; Filmstill

Being(s)

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Estefania Morales, I Drive, God Guides ( yo manejo, Dios me guía), Detail; photo: Tim Albrecht

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The cinema in the new film house, Finkenau 42; photo: Tim Albrecht

CineAmies

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Open Call: Redesign Democracy - Reimagine Voting; graphic design: Konrad Renner

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Park Ficiton, Palmen Feliz Nedra, 2003; photo: Margit Czenki/Park Fiction

Art in public space

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Blick in die von Nadine Droste kuratierte Ausstellung von Master-Studierenden im ICAT der HFBK Hamburg zur Jahresausstellung 2024 (im Vordergrund die Arbeit von Paula Hoffmann und Laura Mahnke); photo: Lukes Engelhardt

How to apply: study at HFBK Hamburg

The application period for studying at the HFBK Hamburg runs from 4 February to 5 March 2025, 4 p.m. All important information can be found here.

Many people stand in front of a wall with portrait photographs

Work by Atu Gelovani at the opening of the Annual Exhibition 2025 at HFBK Hamburg; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

Annual Exhibition 2025 at the HFBK Hamburg

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A sculpture of a small elephant that functions as a climbing frame in a park in Hamburg

Der Elefant im (öffentlichen) Raum Hamburg

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Exhibition view on the occasion of Hiscox Art Prize 2024; photo: Tim Albrecht

Hiscox Art Prize 2024

The HFBK Hamburg cordially invites to the award ceremony of the Hiscox Art Prize 2024 and to the opening of the exhibition with the nominated artists.

The cinema in the new film house, Finkenau 42; photo: Tim Albrecht

Opening of the 2024/25 semester centred on the new film house

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"The New Woman - How Female Artists and Designers shaped the Image of Modernism", graphic by Liudmila Savelyeva, Karla Krey, Amira Mostafa (Klasse Digitale Grafik)

The New Woman

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Detail: Installation by Mark Morris; photo: Tim Albrecht

Graduate Show 2024 - Letting Go

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Julia Scher, Territorium, 2024, installationview at ICAT of HFBK Hamburg; photo: Tim Albrecht

Finkenwerder Art Prize 2024

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Archives of the Body - The Body in Archiving

With a symposium, an exhibition, a film programme and a digital publication, the research project conceived by Prof. Hanne Loreck and Vanessa Gravenor examines the "archive" as a form of order with regard to the human body. Which body archives and discourses have become established? What potentials for political-aesthetic resistance and activism could and can emerge?

Sharon Poliakine, Untitled, 2023, oil on canvas, detail

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Work by Franziska Koepsel at Annual Exhibition 2024; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

Annual Exhibition 2024 at the HFBK Hamburg

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photo: Tim Albrecht

(Ex)Changes of / in Art

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Extended Libraries

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photo: Miriam Schmidt / HFBK

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A disguised man with sunglasses holds a star-shaped sign for the camera. It says "Suckle". The picture is taken in black and white.

photo: Honey-Suckle Company

Let`s work together

Collectives are booming in the art world. And they have been for several decades. For the start of the summer semester 2023, the new issue of the Lerchenfeld Magazine is dedicated to the topic of collective practice in art, presents selected collectives, and also explores the dangers and problems of collective working.

Jahresausstellung 2023, Arbeit von Toni Mosebach / Nora Strömer; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

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Symposium: Controversy over documenta fifteen

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Non-Knowledge, Laughter and the Moving Image, Grafik: Leon Lothschütz

Festival and Symposium: Non-Knowledge, Laughter and the Moving Image

As the final part of the artistic research project, the festival and symposium invite you to screenings, performances, talks, and discussions that explore the potential of the moving images and the (human and non-human) body to overturn our habitual course and change the dominant order of things.

Solo exhibition by Konstantin Grcic

From September 29 to October 23, 2022, Konstantin Grcic (Professor of Industrial Design) will be showing a room-sized installation at ICAT - Institute for Contemporary Art & Transfer at the HFBK Hamburg consisting of objects designed by him and existing, newly assembled objects. At the same time, the space he designed for workshops, seminars and office workstations in the AtelierHaus will be put into operation.

Amna Elhassan, Tea Lady, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

Art and war

"Every artist is a human being". This statement by Martin Kippenberger, which is as true as it is existentialist (in an ironic rephrasing of the well-known Beuys quote), gets to the heart of the matter in many ways. On the one hand, it reminds us not to look away, to be (artistically) active and to raise our voices. At the same time, it is an exhortation to help those who are in need. And that is a lot of people at the moment, among them many artists. That is why it is important for art institutions to discuss not only art, but also politics.

Merlin Reichert, Die Alltäglichkeit des Untergangs, Installation in der Galerie der HFBK; photo: Tim Albrecht

Graduate Show 2022: We’ve Only Just Begun

From July 8 to 10, 2022, more than 160 Bachelor’s and Master’s graduates of the class of 2021/22 will present their final projects from all majors. Under the title Final Cut, all graduation films will be shown on a big screen in the auditorium of the HFBK Hamburg. At the same time, the exhibition of the Sudanese guest lecturer Amna Elhassan can be seen in the HFBK gallery in the Atelierhaus.

Grafik: Nele Willert, Dennise Salinas

June is full of art and theory

It has been a long time since there has been so much on offer: a three-day congress on the visuality of the Internet brings together international web designers; the research collective freethought discusses the role of infrastructures; and the symposium marking the farewell of professor Michaela Ott takes up central questions of her research work.

Renée Green. ED/HF, 2017. Film still. Courtesy of the artist, Free Agent Media, Bortolami Gallery, New York, and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin/Cologne/Munich.

Finkenwerder Art Prize 2022

The Finkenwerder Art Prize, initiated in 1999 by the Kulturkreis Finkenwerder e.V., has undergone a realignment: As a new partner, the HFBK Hamburg is expanding the prize to include the aspect of promoting young artists and, starting in 2022, will host the exhibition of the award winners in the HFBK Gallery. This year's Finkenwerder Art Prize will be awarded to the US artist Renée Green. HFBK graduate Frieda Toranzo Jaeger receives the Finkenwerder Art Prize for recent graduates.

Amanda F. Koch-Nielsen, Motherslugger; photo: Lukas Engelhardt

Nachhaltigkeit im Kontext von Kunst und Kunsthochschule

Im Bewusstsein einer ausstehenden fundamentalen gesellschaftlichen Transformation und der nicht unwesentlichen Schrittmacherfunktion, die einem Ort der künstlerischen Forschung und Produktion hierbei womöglich zukommt, hat sich die HFBK Hamburg auf den Weg gemacht, das Thema strategisch wie konkret pragmatisch für die Hochschule zu entwickeln. Denn wer, wenn nicht die Künstler*innen sind in ihrer täglichen Arbeit damit befasst, das Gegebene zu hinterfragen, genau hinzuschauen, neue Möglichkeiten, wie die Welt sein könnte, zu erkennen und durchzuspielen, einem anderen Wissen Gestalt zu geben

New studio in the row of houses at Lerchenfeld, in the background the building of Fritz Schumacher; photo: Tim Albrecht

Raum für die Kunst

After more than 40 years of intensive effort, a long-cherished dream is becoming reality for the HFBK Hamburg. With the newly opened studio building, the main areas of study Painting/Drawing, Sculpture and Time-Related Media will finally have the urgently needed studio space for Master's students. It simply needs space for their own ideas, for thinking, for art production, exhibitions and as a depot.

Martha Szymkowiak / Emilia Bongilaj, Installation “Mmh”; photo: Tim Albrecht

Annual Exhibition 2022 at the HFBK

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Annette Wehrmann, photography from the series Blumensprengungen, 1991-95; photo: Ort des Gegen e.V., VG-Bild Kunst Bonn

Conference: Counter-Monuments and Para-Monuments.

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23 Fragen des Institutional Questionaire, grafisch umgesetzt von Ran Altamirano auf den Türgläsern der HFBK Hamburg zur Jahresausstellung 2021; photo: Charlotte Spiegelfeld

Diversity

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ASA Open Studio 2019, Karolinenstraße 2a, Haus 5; photo: Matthew Muir

Live und in Farbe: die ASA Open Studios im Juni 2021

Since 2010, the HFBK has organised the international exchange programme Art School Alliance. It enables HFBK students to spend a semester abroad at renowned partner universities and, vice versa, invites international art students to the HFBK. At the end of their stay in Hamburg, the students exhibit their work in the Open Studios in Karolinenstraße, which are now open again to the art-interested public.

Studiengruppe Prof. Dr. Anja Steidinger, Was animiert uns?, 2021, Mediathek der HFBK Hamburg, Filmstill

Unlearning: Wartenau Assemblies

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Ausstellungsansicht "Schule der Folgenlosigkeit. Übungen für ein anderes Leben" im Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg; photo: Maximilian Schwarzmann

School of No Consequences

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Annual Exhibition 2021 at the HFBK

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Katja Pilipenko

Semestereröffnung und Hiscox-Preisverleihung 2020

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Exhibition Transparencies with works by Elena Crijnen, Annika Faescke, Svenja Frank, Francis Kussatz, Anne Meerpohl, Elisa Nessler, Julia Nordholz, Florentine Pahl, Cristina Rüesch, Janka Schubert, Wiebke Schwarzhans, Rosa Thiemer, Lea van Hall. Organized by Prof. Verena Issel and Fabian Hesse; photo: Screenshot

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How the university brings together its artistic interdisciplinary study structure with digital formats and their possibilities.

Alltagsrealität oder Klischee?; photo: Tim Albrecht

HFBK Graduate Survey

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Ausstellung Social Design, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Teilansicht; photo: MKG Hamburg

How political is Social Design?

Social Design, as its own claim is often formulated, wants to address social grievances and ideally change them. Therefore, it sees itself as critical of society – and at the same time optimizes the existing. So what is the political dimension of Social Design – is it a motor for change or does it contribute to stabilizing and normalizing existing injustices?