Paula Doepfner »I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'«

March 22 to June 30, 2025   As part of the INTERIOR cooperation project In cooperation with the Center for Cognitive Science and the Systems Neurophysiology group of the Department of Biology

With »I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'«, the Kunstforum der TU Darmstadt presents a solo exhibition by Paula Doepfner (*1980, Berlin). Her artistic practice is multi-media and includes drawings, objects and installations, which often consist of materials such as bulletproof glass, ice and other organic substances. The exhibition will show a series of drawings as well as a larger wall piece and installations, some of which will be presented to the public for the first time.

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Her delicate drawings of tiny letters are reminiscent of neuronal networks and areas of the human brain. They are in fact based on sketches that she makes as a spectator during brain operations and autopsies at the Charité hospital in Berlin. As delicate and floating as these filigree drawings appear, the textual basis can be quite heavy.

Destruction and violence are also the origin of her sculptural works made of glass. The brief moment of stone impact in the cracked, shattered armored glass panes of banks and luxury properties that she uses is still immanent – but it is supplemented by color pigments and thus takes on a further dimension.

In her works, Paula Doepfner deals with existential themes and human suffering. She uses texts by Paul Celan, the Canadian poet Anne Carson and the surrealist author Joyce Mansour, among others. She combines the texts with passages from the so-called Istanbul Protocol, a manual for the investigation and documentation of torture.

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Paula Doepfner, born in Berlin in 1980, studied fine art at the Berlin University of the Arts and Chelsea College of Art and Design London from 2002 to 2008. In London, she studied under Roger Ackling. She completed her studies in Berlin as a master student of Rebecca Horn. She has received numerous scholarships and awards, including the Hans Platschek Prize (2024), the Krull Foundation Working Scholarship (2023), the EHF Scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (2021/22), the Albert Koechlin Foundation Lucerne Working Scholarship (2010) and the Elsa Neumann Scholarship from the State of Berlin (2008).

She has had institutional solo exhibitions in Germany and abroad, such as at the Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden (2023), the Akademie Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (2022) and the Goethe-Institut, Washington, DC (2015). Her works have been part of group exhibitions in the following institutions, among others Berlin Medical History Museum of the Charité (2023), Museum Reinickendorf in Berlin (2022), Kunstforum der TU Darmstadt (2017) and Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2013). Her works can be found in public and private collections such as the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, the German National Library Leipzig and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Paula Doepfner lives and works in Berlin.

Dr. Patrick Honecker,
Chief Communication Officer der TU Darmstadt

Art is a space for reflection and, in my opinion, our time urgently needs more such spaces for reflection on our topics. Now that the usual spaces for discourse such as newspapers, social media, etc. are being narrowed down more and more to one-sided reporting, in some cases brutally, times are increasingly forming segregated communication bubbles where people often only come together under the premise that their own opinion is necessarily confirmed. In such times, there is a need for unusual and overarching spaces for exchange and a change of perspective, which can be initiated primarily through art. Art overcomes the barriers created by our fixation on the supposed superiority of subjective knowledge. It touches us in the best sense of the word, leaving the constantly malingering intellect behind for the time being and jumping straight into our souls. And this emotional emotion releases blockages and creates completely new approaches.

Picture: Katrin Binner

Dr. Julia Cloot,
Artistic Director Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain

The Kulturfonds has already supported the Kunstforum several times, for example as part of the Darmstadt Photography Days or most recently with the great and comprehensive exhibition on the photographer Milli Bau, which, like the show on display today, had a very special curatorial signature, or rather: a lucky hand. When I look at Paula Doepfner's work, I am reminded of a line from another important singer-songwriter, Leonard Cohen: »There is a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.« The cracks and lines that branch out in Paula Doepfner's incredibly filigree drawings like cracks in ice or glass, the fine fissures that arise in various drawings or sculptures regardless of the material, make you involuntarily hear or almost physically feel a fine crackling or crackling.

Picture: Torsten Bruns

Supporting program

About the cooperation project INTERIOR

INTERIOR was initiated by Dr. Beate Kemfert, Chairman of the Opelvillen Rüsselsheim Art and Culture Foundation. The listed Opelvillen were built as residential buildings and have been used as an exhibition venue since 2003. What all six INTERIOR partner institutions have in common is that they have found their place in buildings that were originally built for other purposes and not for cultural use. These buildings have an eventful history, which has been forgotten since their conversion into a museum or exhibition venue. While the Opelvillen in Rüsselsheim, the Sinclair-Haus Museum in Bad Homburg, the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden and the MGGU in Frankfurt were once private homes, the Kunsthaus Wiesbaden uses the premises of a school and the Kunstforum Darmstadt uses the machine hall of a university to exhibit contemporary art.

As part of INTERIOR, the cooperating cultural institutions will keep their own history alive in a series of exhibitions from fall 2024 to spring 2025. In addition to the exhibition series, an online presence will be developed in which the transformation of the respective buildings from their original use to the present day will be presented in so-called »story guides«.

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