Why can’t we live together – Collection Peters – Messer in Marburg
Group show featuring Paul Hutchinson

The Florian Peters-Messer Collection combines well-known positions of contemporary art with works by young artists. It encompasses a broad spectrum of artistic attitudes that deal with contemporary living conditions and reflect on political and social developments - sometimes with disturbing directness, sometimes in expressive gestures or with conceptual clarity. Spacious installations are as much a part of this as painting, drawing, photography and video art.

The title of the exhibition curated by Linda Peitz, "Why can't we live together," is taken from the artist Murat Önen's painting of the same name and poses the question of the relationship between the individual, relationships, and society, which, according to sociologist Andreas Reckwitz, has transformed into a "society of singularities" since the 1970s: The transformation from industrial to cultural capitalism entailed an asymmetrical distribution of attention and esteem - valorization for a small part of the population, devaluation for all milieus below the new middle and upper classes. While some are busy with self-culturalization, development and realization, the others, the "modernization losers", struggle with the adversities of survival and feel left behind. Bjarne Melgaard's work "I am not a piece of shit I am a piece of society" criticizes this phenomenon. The canon of common values is dissolving, society is becoming more and more divided.

The exhibition reflects in a multifaceted way on the tense potential for conflict within our Western hemisphere, but also in relation to the global South. The artists of the Peters-Messer Collection unmask the beautiful appearance and unerringly hit the sore spot.

The selection of works shown at the Kunstmuseum Marburg focuses on the relationship between the state and the individual, drifting in public space, interpersonal encounters and self-questioning. At the Kunstverein, these themes are taken up and expanded to include questions of cultural identity and gender, migration, and the consequences of colonialism and environmental degradation. Critical contemporary art can "contribute to a change of entrenched points of view, pave the way for the examination of new contents and, in the best case, offer orientation in our increasingly complex world" (Florian Peters-Messer).