breaking out in the Old Prison Freising: Art between freedom and structure
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Breaking out as an artistic experience: Hartmut Fenge and Elsa Nietmann at the Old Prison Freising
The group exhibition breaking out brings together two independent artistic positions in a place whose history charges the title directly: the Old Prison Freising. Between historic walls, an exhibition unfolds that tells of movement, structure, line, and color, sharpening the gaze for boundary experiences. Works by Hartmut Fenge and Elsa Nietmann are shown in an atmosphere that combines concentration, aesthetic experience, and art historical curiosity.
An ambiguous title, a special place
Breaking out here means more than leaving a closed space. The title refers to creative liberation, the crossing of familiar patterns, and that productive uncertainty that arises when art ventures into new territory. In the Old Prison Freising, this idea gains a strong spatial presence: The exhibition focuses on the tension between architecture, history, and contemporary art, making the place itself part of the artwork contemplation.
Elsa Nietmann: Wood sculpture between body, movement, and structure
Elsa Nietmann has been working as a freelance artist since 2006 after her training at the vocational school for wood sculpture in Munich. Her sawn wood sculptures emerge from an intensive dialogue with material, body perception, and movement. With the chainsaw, with color, and with fire, she develops shape by shape, structure by structure. Her works search for a frame in the space and for a visible order that appears both fragile and alive.
Those who look at her sculptures experience a sensitive connection of craftsmanship, material aesthetics, and physical presence. The surfaces, cuts, and compressions of the wood sculpture open up a space where sculpture makes visible not only form but also movement and transformation.
Hartmut Fenge: Painting on the border between figuration and abstraction
Hartmut Fenge found his way to art through detours and deepened his painting practice after studies with Paul Thorsten Hahn, Cornelia Eichacker, and Jerry Zeniuk. His color painting moves in informal compositions where transitions, lines, and areas play a special role. Starting points are often animals and landscapes, which he further develops into schematized organic formations. The images follow not a decorative gesture but a process of understanding that maintains tension between form, color, and composition.
Fenge's painting unfolds powerful pictorial spaces with strong colors, structured layering, and a clear internal logic. Especially in contrast to Nietmann's sculptures, an enticing art experience arises: Here the material, tactile plasticity of the wood, there the color concentrated, intellectual condensation of the canvas.
A place for cultural education and focused artwork contemplation
The exhibition not only opens access to two artistic handwriting styles but also to central questions of contemporary art: How does form arise? Where does movement begin? How can barriers in thinking and working be overcome? Such questions make breaking out an exhibition with pedagogical depth, suitable for art-interested visitors as well as for a curious audience.
The historical framework of the Old Prison enhances the impact of the works displayed and creates an exhibition atmosphere where the engagement with painting and sculpture is particularly intense. The opening on July 31, 2026, at 19:00 marks the start, with the duration from August 1 to August 9, 2026, offering several days for a concentrated encounter with the works.
Conclusion: An exhibition experience between freedom, form, and perception
breaking out promises an inspiring tour between sculpture and painting, between space, rhythm, and material. Anyone wishing to experience contemporary art with art historical awareness and open perception will find here an exhibition that questions the concept of freedom anew. A visit to the Old Prison Freising is definitely worthwhile – precisely because this exhibition invites you to leave familiar patterns of perception in the best sense.
Official channels of the Old Prison Freising:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kultur.stadt.freising
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kultur.Stadt.Freising
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StadtFreising
- Website: https://www.altesgefaengnisfreising.de/
