dorf was founded in 2017 by Andi Fischer, Michael Guenzer, Conny Maier and Dennis Buck.

“Village” is often almost automatically associated with simplicity, manageability and backwardness as well as a certain small-mindedness and cultural poverty. Today's pop culture likes to portray the village and the province as contemplative bubbles of the rural idyll, isolated from big world events - an image that the exhibition projects by Fischer, Buck, Günzer and Maier put up for discussion in a humorous and self-ironic way, while at the same time discussing their own biographies to illuminate. To what extent does it influence the work of an artist when his work takes place within such rural-provincial structures, far from the conventional art business, which is usually located in large cities? What happens when a metropolitan understanding of culture and art meets a rural one? Do the supposed differences even exist? Questions like these reflect the personal circumstances of the four exhibitors: While Dennis Buck and Michael Günzer grew up in Ulm, Conny Maier comes from Berlin, but found an important personal reference point in the city on the Danube. Andi Fischer also lives and works in Berlin, but is originally from Nuremberg. All four share not only a very long and close friendship with each other, but also the experience of asserting themselves as an artist in a personal environment in which this choice of career is neither an obvious nor a self-evident decision. Like Conny Maier and Andi Fischer, Dennis Buck now lives and works in Berlin, while Michael Günzer never felt the need to leave his home. Despite the spatial distance, the four accompanied each other in their artistic development, found important discussion partners and areas for reflection in order to critically question and advance their own actions. The exhibition presents four artistic positions which clearly differ in concept and expression and which, as Conny Maier put it, only have one common denominator: FRIENDSHIP.

Text: Daniela Baumann