2023

öffentlich zugänglich

Kindergarten Am Krautgarten 8, 81243 München

3 Wände, insgesamt 24 Meter (3,50m x 10,66m / 3,50m x 10,66m / 3,50 m x 3,20m), Wandmalerei, Fliesen, Holz, handgefertigte und handbemalte Keramikelemente

Architecture: FRICK KRÜGER NUSSER PLAN2 Architekten, München

Landscape architecture: Jühling&Köppel Landschaftsarchitekten GmbH, München

Photos: Andreas Pauly

Text: Quirin Brunnmeier

Vivid shapes made of different materials, abstract plants, eyes, and mouths: on the way to the kindergarten at Am Krautgarten 8, the school’s young charges pass by a strongly expressive object/tableau that seems inviting, playful, and a little bit uncanny at the same time.

For her artistic intervention, the German-based Norwegian artist Verena Issel has referenced the site’s architecture while also focusing on the public art project’s target group, the children. Starting with the street name, Am Krautgarten (“at the herb garden”), the artist has created a work of art outside the kindergarten that also takes a look at the themes of ecology and climate. Issel uses attributes and anthropomorphization: trees and plants become actors, have their own characteristics. Her multi-layered arrangement resembles a wild garden in an urban environment, where things creep and fly and grow rampantly. The nature she depicts is both wild and playful. In a world where there is increasingly less untamed nature, this work offers a child-friendly approach toward thinking about the alterations in living environments that occur as a consequence of climate change.

For her work, Issel combines diverse materials, which she layers, step by step. She uses color fields, tiles, as well as sculptural elements made of wood and handmade ceramics. The artist layers these elements as if working digitally, shifting them, and creating tension between the poles of organic forms and the geometrical austerity of industrial ceramic tiles. The composition has a narrative component, although the narrative is only indicated. Issel skillfully navigates along the intersections of nature and abstraction, digitization and intuitive expression. Precisely arranged by the artist, the individual elements combine to create a coherent composition containing a wealth of forms. The work reveals its power through the subtle interplay of its components.

Verena Issel was born in Munich in 1982 and studied fine arts at the HfbK Hamburg, as welll as classic philology at the University of Hamburg. Multiple travel grants and artist-in-residency programs have led her to Russia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Lithuania, Papua-New Guinea, and elsewhere. In recent years, a variety of institutions have devoted solo shows to her work, including the Kunsthalle Mannheim (DE), the Volksbühne Berlin (DE), the ZARYA Center for Contemporary Art (RU), the Trafo Kunsthall (NOR), the Museum Lothar Fischer (DE), and the Westfälische Kunstverein / LWL Museum Münster. In 2020 Issel was a guest professor at the HFBK Hamburg. She has been a professor at Brandenburg University of Technology at Cottbus-Senftenberg since November 2023.