Special transfer discussion:

"It's actually always about exploring boundaries." (Katja Pfeiffer)
Prof. Dr Anke Kahl in conversation with art professor Katja Pfeiffer at the Oktogon university gallery in Klophauspark

Creating new perspectives with works of art

Art professor Katja Pfeiffer in a transfer talk at one of Bergische Universität's special locations: the Oktogon in Klophauspark

"I get bored very quickly and I don't want to commit myself," says art professor Katja Pfeiffer at some point during the interview. One reason why it is so difficult to categorise the Karlsruhe-based artist is because she says that she has always made U-turns, simply used new materials and looked for new themes.

She has been a professor of art specialising in artistic practice in the school of art and design at the University of Wuppertal since 2006. The 45-year-old finds the creative process, with the resulting desire for change and all its perspectives, particularly exciting, both for herself and her students.

Talent even without thunder and lightning

However, her artistic path was not accompanied by thunder and lightning from birth, as was the case with some geniuses of the past, she says with a laugh, "I realised during my youth that I liked drawing and that I enjoyed doing it. I also had a certain talent". As she describes it, a set of benevolent parents, mentors who took care of her and various extracurricular learning centres where she was able to work intensively on her art were all conducive. She also had good art teachers whom she admired and who were role models for her.

Despite this good preparation, her training at the Düsseldorf Art Academy was still full of surprises. She studied under Günther Uecker, Alfonso Hüppi and Jan Dibbets, although she felt most at home in Hüppi's class, where a very open concept of genre prevailed. "Hüppi basically gave all genres their space and let people do what they wanted to do. (...) The most important thing was that it corresponded to the person who created it." As a result, many of her former fellow students are still pushing the boundaries between media today.

Exploring boundaries

She herself began to collect and experiment intensively, especially after graduating and moving to Berlin. "It was actually always very clearly about exploring the boundaries of the media, to see how far it is painting, when it goes into space, when it is a sculpture, when it is an installation." In this way, she puts together a kind of 'giant construction kit' of photos, materials, sketches and ideas, which she constantly expands and in whose elements she finds inspiration for new works.

The term 'relief' therefore best describes what characterises her work. Not painting, not sculpture, but something in between. "And I really like this in-between as a term," she explains, "because I often refuse to consider one point of view to be the only valid one. With a relief, I usually can't give a fixed point of view either, which means I have to move with and in front of the object and can adopt many different viewpoints. Many of them are good or beautiful. I find this variability exciting because it gives the viewer the opportunity to adopt their very own perspectives. I also don't want to commit the observer to anything straight away."

This is one of the qualities that the professor appreciates in her fellow artists, whose works she has regularly exhibited together with curator Roman Zheleznyak in the Oktogon in Klophauspark since 2017. She fought for almost ten years to renovate and rent this special place as a university gallery for the University of Wuppertal.

The Oktogon university gallery in Klophauspark

The classicist pavilion in the park created by Ludwig von Lilienthal in the 1870s has had a long and chequered history.
Gallery owner Annelie Brusten woke the building from its slumber and brought renowned artists such as Günther Uecker and Tony Cragg to Klophauspark with ambitious programmes up until the 1990s. "Mrs Brusten wanted her life's work to be in good hands and for someone to continue it," reports Pfeiffer, and Mrs Brusten approached her with this request.
But the hurdles, especially the structural ones, were high. "Vandals broke in here and ruined the whole building. It had to be completely renovated. There was also water damage because the drainage didn't work. In any case, the building was unplayable for a while." As the city has many monuments worthy of protection, the gem was initially forgotten again. Thanks in part to the perseverance of a city employee and the goodwill of the university's building department, as well as the approval of the university management, the building was finally renovated and the first new exhibition opened in autumn 2017. The new tenant, the University of Wuppertal, has had a university gallery to call its own ever since.
In early summer, Pfeiffer and Zheleznyak exhibited works by Canadian Jason Gringler, whose work 'Monolith' (a 3 x 2.5 metre mirror wall) filled the entire exhibition space. "You can't avoid interacting with it. The mirror captures nature, the park and the building, as well as the viewer. When you walk around it, you are constantly busy trying to somehow encounter this thing. And you can hardly avoid it. That is the quality of this work of art. And that is also the quality of the artist Gringler, who saw this place and then installed the artwork in relation to the location with precisely this intention," explains the artist. Pfeiffer is also pleased to be able to show international artists' positions. Gringler, for example, was born in Canada, studied in New York and has since moved to Berlin. This is an exciting background for the curators because, says Pfeiffer, "he brings things with him from everywhere and develops them further here."

The creative process through the eyes of the students

It is always the creative process that fascinates the professor. "The actual work is also wonderful when it's finished and you can look at it, but the creative process up to that point consists of many exciting components." Pfeiffer is interested in the path that the students take, from their views, imagination and technical skills to the finished work of art. She observes, teaches and is enthusiastic about the artworks, and by looking at their creation process, it becomes possible to see the world through the students' eyes. This diversity of thoughts and ideas is also revealed to her by the different things that artists use in their studios. "There are books and photos, there are materials and that often reveals a lot, like looking into a grab bag," she says.

She also motivates her students to take note of exhibitions in the Bergisch art scene. "There are a handful of good institutions here; one is Jürgen Grölle's pass: project gallery, a very good place. The new Wuppertal Kunstverein is exciting, then there's the sculpture park and the Kunsthalle in Barmen. That's four places that offer a really interesting programme and are also very rich in supporting events." And that's by no means all of them, because Wuppertal also has its place in the region's rich programme of exhibition venues. "There's an art association in every little town and it's an Eldorado for students."
Pfeiffer explains the fact that many optional programmes are still not sufficiently accepted with the change in the degree course and regrets this trend to some extent. "Personal development is essential," she emphasises and wishes students enough time to develop themselves. "There are rooms here, there is time here, there are fellow students and lecturers. They should take as much of this with them as possible during their studies. They should develop their personality during their studies so that they can then go to schools as teachers who are able to teach with enthusiasm and commitment; in other words, to become the teachers that they themselves have always wanted to be."

In the novel 'The Gardener's Perspective' by Hakan Nesser, the protagonist, a painter, is asked: "What is the most important element in your paintings?", and she answers: "Silence". When asked about the most important element in Pfeiffer's work, she says: "The change of perspective. Perceiving things from a new point of view and thereby gaining a new perspective on a phenomenon that I didn't have before. That applies both to me and to the viewer."

"The task of art today is to bring chaos into order," said Theodor W. Adorno in 1951, calling for an - extreme - change of perspective even back then.

Uwe Blass (interview from 15/05/2018)

 

Katja Pfeiffer, born in 1973, studied art and education at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Günther Uecker, Alfonso Hüppi and Jan Dibbets as well as history at Heinrich Heine University. She was a master student of Alfonso Hüppi. She has been a professor of art specialising in artistic practice at the university of Wuppertal since 2006.