Through a combined effort of four collections in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Munich and Stuttgart, ‘Art’Us / Collectors’ Collective’ is an association of passionate private collectors of contemporary art, with the aim of making its own collections available to curators and thus accessible to a broad public. The collectors’ collective does not pursue any economic interests, but rather the non-profit approach of sharing art with third parties by supporting exhibitions and artists. In addition, the collective regularly organises its own exhibitions, such as “Reality Check” at the Kunstraum Postdam.

“Reality Check” presents 42 positions selected from the collected art works of the ‘Art´Us / Collectors´ Collective’. These have been supplemented by six artists from Potsdam’s art scene, who have realized new works for the exhibition and it’s thematic reference. This facilitates a local reference to Potsdam artists and is an essential component of the exhibition concept. It expands the internationally collected positions, locating them in Potsdam and, conversely, locates Potsdam in the international art world. Phillip Langer, Steffen Mühle, Susanne Ramolla, Julius Ruge, Christian Stötzner and Cécile Wesolowski are connected to the art space through past and future exhibitions and represent the cultural landscape of the city.

The realities

The representation of reality has always played a major role in the visual arts. When a museum visitor looks at historical works today, the recognition of the reality of life in a past century is an essential part of the visual experience. In order to illustrate the facets of our contemporary reality, the exhibition “RealitätsCheck” was divided into five chapters: Transformation of Reality; Hyper-Reality; Micro-Reality; Abstract Reality; and Virtual Reality. Each part of the exhibition not only shows the ambiguous diversity of our perception of reality, but also reflects the diversity of current art production.

The photo artist Viktoria Binschtok’s series “World of Details”, based on photo-digital finds from the net, is an example of the TRANSFORMATION OF REALITY.

The area HYPER REALITY reflects the environment unembellished and hard, as the artist Thomas Hirschhorn, for example, implements in his installation work.

Subjective reality is the object of the visual axis MICRO-REALITY – John Bock represents this with a look into his very intimate inner world.

The ABSTRACT REALITY – Katharina Grosse represents this chapter of the exhibition together with constructivist works by Bernard Piffaretti and Natalia Załuska, among others.

VIRTUAL REALITY has only recently found its way into artistic practice thanks to the new technical possibilities. The “Reality Check” represents this new field with a work by Simon Speiser from 2017.

The following installation images at “Reality Check” (31 August – 6 October 2019) as part of this Online Exhibition are courtesy of Kunstraum Potsdam.