We know salt and sugar from the kitchen, but can they also make art?

The exhibition explores two products that you would normally look for in the kitchen: salt and sugar. However, both are also materials that can be used to create works of art. The exhibition in the large hall of the Kunstmuseum aims to highlight two tendencies in the artistic use of these crystalline substances: On the one hand, salt and sugar serve as sculpturally understood materials. Their chemical structure offers several perspectives: Dissolved in water, pressed into a solid body, blooming, coloured, burnt, baked or as a trickling mass, both salt and sugar can take on different forms and thus open up perspectives on sculptural questions.

On the other hand, the symbolic and political implications should also be emphasised. Salt, for example, is an essential element for life. It can be regarded as essential to life, but as a salt desert hostile to life, it can symbolise deprivation. Sugar, on the other hand, refers to prosperity, consumption and pleasure, but also to greed and exploitation. Because before this substance could be produced industrially from sugar beet, it was extracted from sugar cane. The history of the sweetener is therefore closely linked to colonial exploitation.

The aim of the exhibition is to show how complex the elements are in art and society and to encourage the public to reflect on their meaning and symbolism in our culture.

with works by:
Christine Braun, Jonas Etter, Takaya Fujii, Helga Franz, Fabian Gatermann, Patricija Gilyte, Fadi al-Hamwi, Nadine Karl, Alice Musiol, Elia Nurvista, Thomas Rentmeister, Tiago Sant’Ana, Johanna Strobel, Kees de Vries, Heidemarie Ziebandt