Joachim Ickrath has devoted himself to constructivist art, which is based on mathematical-geometric principles and in which colour and structure are regarded as the basic elements of painting. Ickrath's 'grid paintings', however, are as much an expression of deliberate planning as they are determined by the coincidences of the moment. His works show simple, geometric formal elements that are transformed through sequencing, layering and intense colour.

The exhibition features the work of six international artists who were born in Iran, had to leave their homeland for political reasons, and now live and work in different countries around the world. On show are prints, videos, objects and installations by Parastou Forouhar, Homa Emami, Samira Hodaei, Simin Keramati, Roshi Rouzbehani and Jinoos Taghizadeh.

The exhibition brings together a selection of works from four decades that revolve around the central themes of GALLI's painting and drawing: the body as an ever-changing form and dwelling, and as a 'place' for desire, longing, anger, aggression and fear.

For the finalists of this year's Peter and Luise Hager Prize, the theme of "obsessive" provided the impetus for an exciting exploration of very different coping fantasies relating to fears and obsessions: the desire to collect, fetishisation, perfectionism, magical thinking, aggressive impulses, compulsive systems of order, claustrophobic situations.

The sculptor makes the intelligence of the hand visible in her video archive. From a multitude of observations of "manual knowledge" (hands sewing, typing on keyboards, flipping switches, applying paint, applying paint, sanding stones, plucking pages, etc.), Mertes has created a corpus that visualises the haptic and and from which spatial transformation processes can be read.

Conny Plank was the first to understand his mixing console not as a medium but as an instrument. In his studio near Cologne, he helped launch Krautrock, Ambient and Elektro as a music producer and created reference sounds for all future generations of bands of this kind. In the 1970s and 1980s he produced the first albums of music groups such as Kraftwerk, Ultravox, Eurythmics, Kraan, Les Rita Mitsouko, DAF, Neu! and many more.

Hisae Ikenage rearranges familiar objects to question modernist forms and assumptions of industrial design. Her new series of sculptural arrangements combines common materials such as chrome tubes and wooden boards with household objects like trays, cups, and vases. The resulting sculptures are deceptively functional and remain in a state of incompleteness, oscillating between construction and deconstruction, suggesting both presence and absence.

The cross-border project SaarArt 2023 turns to specific thematic fields: The examination of "identity", "isolation" and "transience" together with a critical look at the definition and construction of "beauty" form the content framework for an exhibition that will develop its own character at each of the participating institutions in Saarland and Berlin - with numerous site-specific works and installations.

With immersive installations, the artist Emma Adler casts light on the shallows of the internet and uses different levels of reality to examine human perception as the key to understanding the world. Her works focus on the relationship between reality and media representation. (J. Stellmann)

In 1960, the Museum of Modern Art bought two of her landscape photographs: Monika von Boch was already one of the most important photographic artists of the post-war period who, with recourse to the "New Vision" and Bauhaus photography of the 1920s and 30s, focused on the artistic potential of the medium. She played a significant role in the renewal of creative and experimental photography.

Digital worlds are an integral part of our reality today. Technology and algorithms determine our lives, they influence our perception and behavior. Artists use the principles of the digital world

of the digital world for the discourse on current phenomena as well as on structures in virtual space. With their works, they make visible the complex entanglements between the virtual and the real world.

The photographs by Stephan Böhnlein, photographer and musician of the "Deutsche-Radio-Philharmonie-Saarbrücken-Kaiserslautern", take us on a journey "behind the scenes": into unknown professional landscapes, atmospheric scenes and seemingly foreign locations.

Sofie Dawo's (1926-2010) textile works emerge predominantly from the material itself: its properties, its possibilities. To discover there is an artist whose works were long forgotten, who made an important contribution to concrete art with her experimental approach.

The grant "Regards Sans Limites / Gazing without limits" is awarded to young photo artists from the Greater Region (Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, Grand-Est/France, Luxembourg, Belgium) to promote their projects. Five artists were selected to present their own photographic view of nature.

Artists have always negotiated different modes of perception and are the perfect "soft agitators" to draw attention to current social issues. As long as they reach visitors on a personal level, they can be picked up and subsequently question aspects of their world view. The exhibition unites different artistic positions, inviting viewers to actively participate in creating a "new future".

The installation addresses a politically explosive and socially serious event. It juxtaposes the ongoing refugee tragedy in the Mediterranean with the EU's discord on the issue of immigration. Based on the rescue of shipwrecked people by the ship "Sea-Watch 3" in 2019, the work makes references to the work of Beethoven, whose 9th symphony is closely associated with humanism and is considered synonymous with international understanding par excellence.