ZUCKER – artistic and curatorial alliance between NEBYULA Munich and Galerie Mitte Bremen.
Munich: 08 November 2024 - 31 January 2025
Bremen 15 November 2024 - 15 February 2025
The Berg, Marco Fusinato, Kira Keune, Luise Marchand, Rosanna Marie Pondorf, Anna Raczynska, Renen - g.i.i.c.s:, Alexander Scharf, Lazar Stojić, Joseph Maurus Wandinger
Curated by Rebekka Kronsteiner & Kalas Liebfried
"Money talks, so shut the fuck up and listen." This line from Domo Genesis' track *Power Ballad* hits the core of our exploration: the unspoken relationship between money and power, the fine line between silence and confession that shapes our reality. In a system founded on the old maxim "You don't talk about money," change can only occur when this silence is broken and the inevitable interplay between capital and culture—both ideological and material—is dissected.
Against this backdrop, the artistic-curatorial alliance between NEBYULA (Munich) and Galerie Mitte (Bremen) emerges: a collaboration that highlights both geographic and economic contrasts. While Bavaria is Germany’s economically strongest state, Bremen sits on the opposite end of the spectrum. Yet, within this divergence, surprisingly similar systemic challenges appear: precarious working conditions, inadequate funding, and often unattainable institutional access for artists and cultural workers. The curators of this project, Rebekka Kronsteiner and Kalas Liebfried, are artists themselves who engage with the creation of art spaces and off-spaces as well as the negotiation and restructuring of social, economic, and cultural conditions.
ZUCKER is a platform explicitly focused on issues of value creation, consumerism, and classism—complexities that are omnipresent but often taboo in the art system. The ten participating artists approach these questions through their practice and their backgrounds as cultural workers. Their works address themes such as infrastructure and institutional critique (Renen/g.i.i.c.s), gambling and self-empowerment (Kira Keune), the (im-)materiality of value creation (Rosanna Marie Pondorf), systems of participation, debt, and resource use (Joseph Maurus Wandinger), the ambivalent relationship between consumers and art institutions (The Berg), sugar as bait in VR worlds (Alexander Scharf), anarchism and publication (Marco Fusinato), the disturbing, alienating qualities of money (Luise Marchand), status symbols as artifacts of postmodernity (Lazar Stojić), and the relationship between the Euro and harvest (Anna Raczynska).
ZUCKER is a metaphor: on one hand, a consumable substance that provides short-term energy, and on the other, a reference to the commodity as currency and to Europe’s problematic past, particularly the Hanseatic cities in colonial trade—a symbol of the entanglement between economic power and cultural capital. In this sense, the inputs and outputs of the scenes from both cities, including thematically curated works, become an alliance for the urgent questions of our time: a space that not only calls for reflection but invites discussion and urges action.
Caption graphic: Design: CHCA and Alexander Scharf
