EXPANDED FIELD I – migrating the colour fields

[Lars Schumacher]

From 6 to 25 June 2026, Kunstraum MITTE37 in Burgdorf presents EXPANDED FIELD I – migrating the colour fields, an exhibition that brings twelve contemporary artistic voices from Chicago into dialogue with a German audience for the first time. The project opens a transatlantic field of resonance in which painting, performance, dance, music, and film unfold not as separate disciplines but as interwoven modes of perception. As part of the international symposium THE OCEAN BETWEEN, initiated in 2016 by artist and curator Marianna Buchwald, the exhibition understands the ocean not as a dividing line but as a generative space — a fluid zone in which artistic energies, cultural experiences, and aesthetic impulses circulate freely.

Over the past decade, this network has fostered numerous collaborations between Chicago and the Hanover region, ultimately leading to the connection with Burgdorf. The participating artists — Amy Hanks, Daniela Castro, Juan Enrique Roque Irizarry Jr., Judith Meyer, Kao Ra Zen, Kathryn Hempel, Kevin B. Chatham, Lori Kaplan, Marianna Buchwald, Sarah W. Holmes, Takako, and Beate Axmann — draw from Chicago’s experimental tradition, a cultural landscape shaped by jazz, improvisation, Bauhaus legacies, performance art, and independent off‑spaces. Their works reflect a climate in which creative risk, interdisciplinary openness, and social imagination are not exceptions but foundations.

The exhibition moves across performance, film, installation, painting, poetry, and movement‑based practices, expanding the perceptual field into new territories. The subtitle migrating the colour fields evokes chromatic spaces that refuse to remain fixed: colour appears not as surface but as energy, shifting between bodies, rooms, and images. In this context, perception itself becomes migratory, traversing cultural, material, and sensorial thresholds.

A central emphasis lies on direct artistic exchange. Due to current travel and customs conditions, a curated selection of works is shown, while the artists themselves take center stage. On 6 June, three public conversations introduce the symposium and its connective vision, including reflections on the experiences of German artists exhibiting in the United States. Beate Axmann, who has worked extensively in Chicago and presented multiple solo exhibitions there, shares insights into the dynamics of transatlantic artistic practice. Her works on paper, created during her time in Chicago, capture urban energy, cultural multiplicity, and personal encounters — emblematic of the transformative nature of being in motion, of losing and rediscovering perspectives that shape artistic identity.

The exhibition reveals how art builds bridges: between Chicago and Burgdorf, between studio and street, between personal experience and social observation. Lars Schumacher, who has exhibited in Chicago through this network, underscores the significance of these sustained artistic friendships. Susanne Schumacher, founder of Kunstraum MITTE37, envisions the space as a laboratory where international and local perspectives meet, generating new forms of dialogue.

The finissage on 25 June 2026 is conceived as a moment of cultural encounter. Visitors are invited to meet additional Chicago‑based artists, followed by a screening of dislocation by Richard Syska and Kevin B. Chatham, presented by the Chicago Film Group 312 — widely regarded as one of the city’s most innovative video collectives. The evening concludes with a visit to Burgdorf’s traditional Zapfenstreich, creating an unexpected yet meaningful intersection between contemporary art and local cultural ritual.

Kunstraum MITTE37 has rapidly evolved into a vibrant site for contemporary art. Located on Mittelstraße 37, the space merges the intimacy of a working studio with the openness of a public forum. Conceived as a place where art is not only shown but collectively thought, discussed, and experienced, MITTE37 positions itself as a dynamic laboratory for transformation, movement, identity, and encounter. Future exhibitions will continue to explore these themes, establishing the space as a platform for interdisciplinary exchange and communal artistic experience — a site that reinvents itself with each exhibition while carrying forward its history as a creative center within the city.

THE OCEAN BETWEEN continues to connect artists from Chicago and Germany. Its ninth edition in 2026, organized by Marianna Buchwald, Kristin Heike, and the network The Culture Bridge / Kultur Brücke, extends across multiple venues in Hanover and Burgdorf, with organizational support from Lars Schumacher for MITTE37. Through these collaborations, the symposium reinforces the idea of the ocean as an expanded field — a space of movement, relation, and artistic migration.