Employed as an office manager in the former GDR, and working as a self-taught artist, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt used her typewriter to create patterns and abstract compositions with characters and letters at the junction of Concrete Poetry, Dada, and Minimal Art. Her linguistic explorations that she developed further into collages later on, are often based on ambiguity. Published on the occasion of the large retrospective at MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam, NICHTS NEUES explores her typewritings, prints, collages, and paintings in thematic episodes. Although Wolf-Rehfeldt discontinued her artistic practice after the fall of the Berlin Wall, her art has lost none of its relevance. In a poetic, idiosyncratic, and often humorous way, the nonconformist artist explored themes such as environmental issues, intellectual freedom, community, and communication. Her sometimes subtle, sometimes more literal play with words, meanings, and forms continue to reveal the unexpected.

In conversations and interviews Joseph Beuys mentioned Marcel Duchamp more than any other artist. And hardly anyone else seems to have challenged him more than this artist from the previous generation. Direct evidence of this is his oft-cited action Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird uberbewertet (The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated) from 1964, through which Beuys attempted to shift focus onto the political and social dimensions of his concept of expanded art. The associations and connections between the artists go deep. Both used similar radical strategies to rejuvenate the concept of art and the role of art in everyday life; their questions had a number of aspects in common. This richly illustrated catalogue is the first to undertake a profound exploration of this multilayered relationship, while investigating both artists' future-oriented potential.