ADD ART 2016

Between November 18-20, and for the fourth year in a row, 18 companies in Hamburg will open their doors to the public to show part of their private collections or selective artworks from young artists within the ADD ART initiative (www.addart.de).
When TER GROUP, a leading Pan-European distributor of chemical raw materials, natural and synthetic resins, plastics, and waxes’ producer (AUDEAMUS happens to share the office building) decided this year to repeat in ADD ART, I suggested them to display Berlin based artist and photographer Andrea Grützner’s work.
I happened to discover Andrea last year, in a Group Exhibition in the Deichtorhalle – Haus der Fotographie and I was simply fascinated by her masterful use of color and technic and specially by the pictorial beauty of her work as a whole. As a good friend of mine put it recently: “she transforms ugliness into beauty”. I think that this observation goes a little too far, but certainly she enjoys the extraordinary gift to find beauty where we only see mediocracy.
Despite her youth, she was awarded her Master of Arts degree in photography by the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences only in 2014, her pictures have been featured at festivals and in solo and group shows around the world. Andrea‘s main medium is photography, but her pictures seem to shift between different media like photography, painting and collage. Her interests involve the perception of space, historic and memorial structures, visual irritation, the familiar and at the same time unfamiliar.
During the last months, from time to time, doubts assaulted me if it was worth the effort we were putting into transforming the lobby and the conference rooms of a very functional building at best -and unspectacular at worst- into a “kind of art gallery” for just a weekend. But when I helped Andrea earlier today to open her carefully packed works, when I saw how three people meticulously measured the distance to hammer 5mm nails in a printout canvas to obtain the exact folds when we discussed for over one hour where to stand a two side plexi-glass sculpture (and additional two about how to better light it), I thought: “yes, it is worth it”.

I am really excited to have contributed to this exhibition, and cannot wait to see the reaction of the employees, friends and guests tomorrow at the opening, but whatever it happens, I know I just did it, as we say in Spanish “POR AMOR AL ARTE”.