We Put Hands into the Water, conceived and curated by Daniel Marzona, was one of the last projects he worked on before he unexpectedly passed away on April 22,
2024.

Featuring renowned artists Ulla von Brandenburg and Olaf Holzapfel, the exhibition is held at the historic Altes Kurhaus Bad Kösen from June 15 until September 8, 2024 and serves as a testament to his profound influence on the art world.

The launch of dieDAS art by the Design Akademie Saaleck is a seamless continuation of the ongoing project by the Marzona Stiftung in Saaleck. It aligns with their mutual dedication to promoting collaborative ideation, innovation, and integration through culture and art projects in the rural region of southern Saxony-Anhalt, engaging both local and international audiences.

For the inaugural exhibition, the currently unused “Altes Kurhaus Bad Kösen” (Old Spa Center) is being revitalized. Built in 1911 by Building Councillor Schmidt, this neoclassical building helped establish Bad Kösen as a beloved spa destination beyond its region, a tradition that is now being revived.

Ulla von Brandenburg’s large-format fabric panels transform the exhibition space into a vivid, colorful, and stage-like dream-world. Describing her work as “spatial stagings,” she combines elements of folklore, songs, theater, dance, and architecture. Her works explore themes of the individual as well as their underlying dynamics of community and society between chaos and order. Ulla von Brandenburg’s pieces formally explore the theatrical elements within visual arts while simultaneously drawing attention to the fine between utopian visions and tangible reality. By doing so, her pieces foster new viewpoints and stimulate the imagination, venturing into previously unexplored territories of thought.

Olaf Holzapfel has been deepening and expanding his exploration of natural materials and traditional techniques in his practice for more than ten years. Actual and illusionistic pictorial spatiality, light, and color play important roles in his diverse works. Using straw, reed, hay, and other organic materials, he delves into the relationship between rural and urban spaces through material images, sculptures, and installations. By exploring this thematic field through recourse to traditional craft techniques, without nostalgia but fully in line with the theoretical discourse, and feeding it into the contemporary art world, Holzapfel’s work proves to be relevant and groundbreaking in the social and ecological dimensions of its questions.

Despite their differences, both artists develop new ways of addressing current social issues by drawing on older traditions of craftsmanship, theater, or humanistic knowledge. In each case, the artist takes special consideration of physicality, encompassing the viewer’s bodily perception and using the body as a benchmark and starting point for the artist’s own work. In this regard, the true potency and efficacy of both works manifest only when its counterpart is encountered in physical space. The exhibition is accompanied by an educational program for visitors and schoolchildren from Bad Kösen, the Burgenlandkreis and beyond.