Touched Untouched

Exhibition of the artist members of the Württembergischer Kunstverein
September 2 – October 1, 2023

Every two years the Württembergischer Kunstverein curates an exhibition of its artist members. For each exhibition, a topic is announced and all submissions that fit in terms of form and content are considered. This year the show revolves around aspects of touching and being touched, of grasping and encroaching, of the untouched and the untouchable. The focus is on borders, on relations of proximity and distance.

One of the central experiences of the pandemic was the imperative of distance and non-touching. Proximity and touch were suddenly experienced as a danger and associated with a well-founded fear of transmission, disease, and death. The deep human need for touch had to be set aside, becoming a longing for many.

At the same time, however, the prescribed distance was experienced as pleasant and liberating because proximity and touch can also encroach and represent a transgression of boundaries. Relationships of closeness and distance between people as well as between people and other living beings or things must be renegotiated again and again, both individually and socially: to protect the personality, freedom, the environment … In the art context the prohibition of touching is omnipresent to protect the work of art. At the same time art touches us entirely without physical contact which is one of its greatest potentials. But here, too, it is a matter of dealing with boundaries in terms of emotional overpowering and manipulation or hurt.

The exhibition, comprising more than 250 works, shows highly diverse artistic approaches to these questions. It provides an impressive overview of the great multiplicity of aesthetic practices among our members and is at the same time an expression and the result of their great commitment to the Kunstverein.