Volker März. Der Affe fällt nicht weit vom Stamm

With his multi-layered works on display at the Georg Kolbe Museum, the Berlin-based artist Volker März (b. 1957) poses provocative questions about our history and the present day. Drawing on his personal experiences of the post-war period and his engagement with the era of National Socialism, he explores the hierarchies and forms of power in today’s society. In a walk-through total work of art comprising sculptures, paintings, texts, performances and music videos, Volker März creates a personal, at times humorous, yet always political iconography that draws on a universe of quotations and images. In the summer of 2018, he populates the exhibition spaces of Georg Kolbe’s historic 1920s artist’s studio with a widely ramified family of colourfully painted clay figures.

Gender-ambiguous hybrid creatures, part-human and part-animal with red ears, interact in small groups and wrestle with themselves and one another over the grand narrative of the world. The faces of well-known figures from European cultural history – including Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Joseph Beuys and Hannah Arendt – mingle amongst the many nameless protagonists. Some of the small-scale figures hint at the artist’s own features, as he, in the role of an autobiographical narrator, plunges right into the fantastical round dance of symbolic and poetic gestures, actions and short stories.