HOUSE TOUR #19, December 2025
Insight into the Depot
Between Beginning and End: Elisabeth and Manfred Bartling
With the final house tour of the year, we would like to present our current display in the Donors’ Room. This room is dedicated to Elisabeth and Manfred Bartling and documents their commitment to Haus. Kunst. Mitte. while also showcasing selected works from their practice. Visitors can sit on a comfortable sofa and listen to Manfred Bartling’s stories in an interview or pick up one of Elisabeth Bartling’s volumes of poetry.
This tour places particular focus on the works by Manfred Bartling that explore the depiction of the human head. Etchings and felt tip drawings demonstrate very different techniques and working methods. Sometimes reduced, sometimes detailed and at other times confused or distorted, the selection illustrates the diverse facets of his artistic practice. Central to this presentation are drawings of heads, including a series in which the faces are composed of two mirrored yet chromatically varied halves.
These two halves appear almost Janus like, not because they turn away from each other but because they appear side by side as contrasting color versions of a single face. Sometimes executed in blue and sometimes in red, they stand as two opposing poles such as warm and cold, calm and energy, beginning and end. In their juxtaposition these chromatic opposites form a new whole, a frontal face that unites both sides within itself.
Beginning and end are always close to one another and where one begins it touches the other. From this proximity and from the transition between both poles something new arises. It is a moment of change that becomes visibly condensed in the image.
Installation view Manfred Bartling in the founders' room in Haus. Kunst. Mitte., © Team HKM