Aktuelle Wege

Current Paths

Exhibition Catalog for the event Symposium Süßen 2018

In the 1980s, three village symposia took place in Süßen. Over the course of these ten days, students of the sculpting classes of Otto Herbert Hajek and Jürgen Brodwolf selected and engaged with places and squares in the city. Thirty years later, the former mayor of Süßen, Martin Bauch, together with his wife and other contributors organized a new symposium titled “Current Paths”. The artists from the original symposia were invited with the intent of highlighting their current work and drawing a connecting line from then to now.
The exhibition catalog describes the countless hours and kilometers of the journey from concept to the events themselves. Mr. Bauch talks about his visits to the various artists. Each participating artist’s artistic development as well as their past and current work are presented. One chapter is devoted to a short history of the three original symposia, another to the reunion at the recent symposium and one to the educational formats supervised by some of the artists. Finally, readers are given a look into the exhibition at the recently completed Kulturhalle Süßen.

The challenge of this catalog was presenting as clearly and succinctly as possible the ambitious scope of this project as well as all the 22 artists’ and artist duos’ diverse work. In addition, the book structures its chapters upon the temporal sequence of the project. The work selected for the book’s cover, by artist Olaf Probst, anticipates the density of content contained in the catalog. The overriding arc in the book’s interior is formed by the sparingly used dark orange and its lighter gradations, the dashed lines as a symbol of the paths and the circular areas of color that mark places and stations along the way.