Ci­ne­ma of To­mor­row — Art and Co­gni­ti­on in Dia­lo­gue: Tho­mas Hart­mann & Alex­an­der Klu­ge at the Kunst­hal­le RostockM‑V

Vi­si­tors to Tho­mas Hart­man­n’s ex­hi­bi­ti­on in the light-floo­ded Kunst­hal­le Ros­tock are im­mer­sed in a uni­que field of ten­si­on bet­ween image and space. Hart­man­n’s works un­fold their power far bey­ond the boun­da­ries of the can­vas and re­vol­ve around an emp­ty cent­re in in­ge­nious ar­ran­ge­ments, the “Hart­mann han­gings”. The se­ven met­re high walls pro­vi­de a stage for the pain­tings to reve­al exis­ten­ti­al ques­ti­ons about be­ing and pas­sing away. The mo­nu­ment to self-em­power­ment is par­ti­cu­lar­ly im­pres­si­ve: A shelf fil­led wi­th 300 de­s­troy­ed can­va­ses and stret­cher frames re­flects Hart­man­n’s ar­tis­tic ap­proach to tran­si­ence and crea­ti­ve choice. A vi­deo in­si­de the shelf end­less­ly do­cu­ments the sel­ec­tion and de­s­truc­tion, so that the con­fron­ta­ti­on wi­th his own le­ga­cy be­co­mes a work of art.

A cen­tral mo­tif in Hart­man­n’s work is the shelf as a sym­bol of or­der and coll­ec­tion, which ta­kes on a new mea­ning in a vi­deo work crea­ted in col­la­bo­ra­ti­on wi­th Alex­an­der Klu­ge. In “Ci­ne­ma of To­mor­row”, the two ar­tists joint­ly ad­dress the chal­lenges of our pre­sent and the ro­le of edu­ca­ti­on and cul­tu­ral he­ri­ta­ge for the fu­ture. While Hart­mann uses pain­ting and in­stal­la­ti­on as a ve­hic­le for his ide­as, Klu­ge is known as a co-foun­der of the New Ger­man Ci­ne­ma and an in­tellec­tu­al who com­bi­nes li­te­ra­tu­re, film and phi­lo­so­phy. The ex­hi­bi­ti­on, on show from 18 De­cem­ber 2025 to 1 March 2026, is a mee­ting place of image, word and time that ar­tis­ti­cal­ly re­flects on the ques­ti­ons of exis­tence and pas­sing on.