Ashes and Gold A World's Journey

For the first time an exhibition attempts the surprising combination of two specific materials in contemporary art: ash and gold, two substances which could hardly be more different in terms of their cultural significance. Spaces between nature and culture, between life and death are opened up for the visitor in the field of tension between these two highly symbolic materials.

Gold is, therefore, not only an elementary natural material, but also a valuable resource par excellence and an expression of man’s desire for the exclusive, the rare, the unique. Ash, on the other hand, appears as its dark, opposite side. It is the residue of the combustion process, the last stage in material transformation, irreversible and final. In the field of tension between these highly symbolic but opposite materials we enter a sensually palpable space between nature and culture, value and myth, between life and death.

As materials in art they are anything but superficial, because they always speak of an open spirit which invents them, stages them and thereby permanently changes itself. And as symbols of cold, eternal material and hot, material-consuming energy, they are materials with great symbolic power which address the observer almost directly. The high-carat exhibition with numerous renowned artists offers a stimulating parcours through the history of art in the last 40 years.