Exhibitions2024EGG SI BI SCHEN

Curated by Mari Otberg just in time for the start of spring, the show entitled EGG SI BI SCHEN, which is reminiscent of a luring call, brings together over 40 positions that deal with one of the most important symbols of humanity: the egg. 

While the British sculptor and installation artist Gavin Turk, for example, has been working on the subject for a long time, other works, such as those by Madeline von Foerster, Elisabeth von Samsonow and Nina Vandeweghe, were created especially for the show. Be it in the medium of painting, photography, collage, sculpture, manifesto or installation: the works of the artists shown here enter into an exciting discourse. 

Otberg's exhibition includes golden eggs, rotten eggs, big eggs, fish eggs, political eggs, conceptual eggs, plastic eggs, composted eggs, cosmic eggs, egg heads, holy eggs, egg noodles, metal eggs, porcelain eggs, fried eggs and many more. 

EGG SI BI SCHEN also sees itself as an examination of those works of European art history in which eggs are central pictorial motifs: from Hieronimus Bosch's "The Concert in the Egg" to Piero della Francesca's "Pala Montefeltro", where an egg hanging from a shell floats above the Madonna, and Salvatore Dalí's most famous programmatic work "Metamorphosis of Narcissus" to ironic confrontations such as René Magritte's "Questioning Chicken", Maria Lassnig's "Breakfast with Egg" or Sarah Lucas` "Selfportrait with fried Eggs”. 

With egg tempera as the oldest painting medium, the egg is also materially at the origin of European art, from early medieval panel painting and icon painting on. Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" for instance was painted in egg tempera, Edvard Munch used it for his epochal work "The Scream", the long underestimated Hilma af Klint loved this natural painting medium, which is usually mixed by artists themselves, and the curator and artist Mari Otberg also cultivates this old tradition. 

However, the egg is not only important in Christian culture, especially around Easter, where it symbolises fertility, resurrection and eternal life, but can also be found in myths of origin around the world. In many versions of it - from Egypt and Greece to India and China - the world and often the first human is created from an egg. Accordingly, there is a whole world to discover in EGG SI BI SCHEN! 

Artists: Anouk Lamm Anouk • Milo Barsan • Lukas Beck • Manfred Bockelmann • Udo Bohnenberger • Ida-Marie Corell • Nicolas Dellamartina • Lars Eidinger • Madeline von Foerster • Marieli Fröhlich • Georg Herold • Edgar Honetschläger • Luisa Hübner • Christian Hutzinger • Song Jing • Ulrike Johannsen • Gerhard Kaiser  • Richard Kaplenig • Franzi Kreis • Karin Lischke • Constantin Luser • Nicole Malbec • Jonathan Meese • Georgij Melnikov • Rudi Molacek • Haralampi G. Oroschakoff • Mari Otberg • Steven Pollock • Heti Prack • Gert Resinger • Gerwald Rockenschaub • Alexander Ruthner • Elisabeth von Samsonow • Eva Schlegel • Maria Serebriakova • Marielis Seyler • Luke Stephenson • Christian Stock • Gavin Turk • Nina Vandeweghe • Anny Wass • Peter Wehr • Nives Widauer • Erwin Wurm