Is contemporary art’s recurring turn to a material with a rich tradition an attempt to free the precious metal from its historical heritage, from grandeur and pathos? Is the saying “all that glitters is not gold� thus put to a test by transferring or shifting the always sought-after, glittery material to other contexts? The exhibition Doré | Vergoldet | Gilded and accompanying catalogue bring together works of contemporary art that deal with gold as a material and colouring agent and thus reflect the notions of value and symbolic power connected with it. Artists: Antje Blumenstein, Olivia Breckemeyer, Ruth Campau, Marianne Engel, Luka Fineisen, Niklas Goldbach, Eckart Hahn, David Krippendorff, Claudia Kugler, Alicja Kwade, Andréas Lang, Via Lewandowsky, Michael Müller, Sebastian Neeb, Andrea Pichl, Johanna Reich, Julian Röder, Stéphanie Saadé, Michael Sailstorfer, Karin Sander, Karina Spechter, Henrik Strömberg, Philip Topolovac, Panos Tsagaris, Frauke Wilken, Andrea Winkler, Clemens Wolf, He Xiangyu. Text in English, German and French.

Yafeng Duan (*1973) was born in Hebei in northern China, in the shadow of the Great Wall. For the artist - now based in Berlin - nature is the mirror of the soul, and the source from which she draws is a spiritual one. Artistic creativity is a vehicle for approaching and exploring reality and transferring it through painting into non-spaces. Her pictures testify to her notion of a breath of energy, which spreads out into a great void and, thanks to the constitutive factors of yin and yang, solidifies into all manifestations of existence, only to pass away again. Text in English, Chinese and German.