Ausstellung "Hitzefrei"

In the organizer's words:

"Heat-free"

Vernissage: August 9, 2025, 7 pm

Welcome: Angelika Wild-Wagner, 2nd Chairwoman of the GEDOK Heidelberg

Duration: August 9 to September 13, 2025

Location: GEDOK Gallery, Römerstraße 22, 69115 Heidelberg

Accompanying event: "SUMMERTIME" - SUMMER CONCERT FOR the GEDOK summer exhibition

September 7, 2025 at 6 pm, Heidelberg Music Academy, Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage 26

Alexandra Netzold (cello) & Oliver Taupp (piano)

When we were still at school, the announcement that it was "heat-free" caused us to rejoice and be very happy, as it meant we could spend the rest of the day in the outdoor pool - wonderful!

The summer of 2024 was the warmest on record. Climate change is causing temperatures to rise well above 30 degrees and rainfall is almost non-existent in some areas.

"Hitzefrei", a theme that encompasses the lightness of summer on the one hand and the problems of climate change on the other.

Eight artists - Ingrid Eckert (B.O.), Ruth Groß (BK), Nancy Hespeler (BK), Laura Figueiredo-Brandt (BK), Birgit Kunz (BK), Birgit Sommer (BK), Claudia Stamatelatos (BK) and Annette Wöhrl (BK) - deal with this complex topic in different ways.

Ingrid Eckert, for example, brings memories of her grandfather's light-flooded garden to life in her colorful yet delicate fabric assemblages - memories of golden poppies and corn poppies, levkoyas, tall hollyhocks and Swiss chard, whose fleshy leaves can be not only green, but also yellow and bright pink.

In her painting, Brazilian-born painter Laura Figueiredo-Brandt combines childhood experiences on the summer beach in Rio de Janeiro with the sweetness of cherries, which for her symbolize summer in Germany - as fruit that catches the sun's rays and transforms them into an explosion for the senses.

Birgit Kunz is also on the trail of the sense of taste in her pastel portraits, which depict the pleasurable shared lapping up of ice cream, which in addition to the culinary pleasure also focuses on the communal experience.

Ruth Groß 's large-format acrylic paintings capture an experience on canvas that we are perhaps all familiar with: lying in a meadow as a child, gazing up at the sky - dreaming of traveling with the clouds, gliding over landscapes, seas and mountains, being free. Her landscapes appear structured, but often dissolve into two-dimensional worlds of color - between figuration and abstraction.

With her abstract spray paintings, the artist Claudia Stamatelatos lends a special intuitive form to the feeling of heat at the height of summer, "when the heat feels like thick absorbent cotton that you have to push your body through with great effort" and you can see mini mirages above the asphalt. "The degree of abstraction," she says, "alludes to the inability to think logically and rigorously under a blazing sun."

In her monotypes and lino prints,Annette Wöhrl explores the contrasts and contradictions of the hot season. The clearly structured, linearly arranged rectangles - a visual metaphor for the harmonious, positive tension of summer, underscored by bright, vibrant colors - are contrasted by a final image entitled "sunset", in which the dark colors cast a silent echo of the dark side of summer.

The ambivalence of beautiful summer days in times of climate change is the theme of Nancy Hespeler's large-format acrylic paintings, executed on discarded trade fair stands: on closer inspection, the bright, boldly colored pictures point to the serious problem of our planet's overheating. We see insect deaths, imploding fruit as an allegory for our planet, privileged long drinks served on parched earth, and people in swimming pools who look unhealthy in either the water or the shimmering air.

Finally,Birgit Sommer 's experimental work "Forest Habitat - Out of Balance" traces the destructive work of the bark beetle, whose feeding traces in the bark of the trees she also extracts creative aspects from. By transferring the complex and meandering structures of the beetle formations onto paper using graphic means, she draws attention to one aspect of climate change in a striking way.