The cognitive process of finding is an elementary component of all art production. »Findungen / Findings« brings together four artists who pass through this cognitive process in very different ways and who now relate their findings to each other in the exhibition space. Taken out of the context of individual oeuvres in this way, entering into dialogue with one another, the artworks join together to create new and surprising narratives.

In her Traces of Truth, Jana Müller playfully manipulates the viewer’s associations, laying down imaginary trails that call for a process of tracking down. Her installations can be read as records of mysterious events. Her formal idiom recalls forensic procedures, theatre sets, and the aesthetics of cinema. In the current Trace, on show at Deutscher Künstlerbund, the artist follows in the footsteps of her father who worked as a criminologist in East Germany.

Jan Schmidt’s work centres on processual explorations of material. Both the Halfpipe Drawing and the thin, planed down wooden objects included in this exhibition are the results of intense, protracted material studies in which time played a key role: the abstract drawing, for example, was made by dropping a pencil onto a curved sheet of paper several thousand times. This rule-based creative process may appear strict, but the result is rich in poetic associations.

Time is also a crucial factor in Pia Linz’s artistic process. Her focus is not on material, however, but on specific places and spaces. Based on precise observation, she translates them directly into drawings that interweave plan-like analysis and subjective annotation, outer and inner world. The drawing in the show, Parlamentsviertel (Parliament District), which is part of the art collection of Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, invites viewers to immerse themselves in its wealth of observations and compare them with their own.

The encounter between Pia Linz’s Parlamentsviertel and Björn Drenkwitz’s Protest gives rise to possible narratives on democracy, public space and political uprising. The cobblestones lying on the floor are engraved with slogans from political demonstrations, making each one both a storage medium and a potential projectile. Engraving and storage also play a part in Drenkwitz’s second work in the show, The Rest Is Silence. A line recalling an audio spectrum is engraved on four baseball bats, the result of a physical process: while reciting Hamlet’s final words, an actor drew the line manifested by the natural movement of his hand while speaking.

The exhibition was initiated by the four artists, all members of the Deutscher Künstlerbund, and jointly conceived for the Berlin exhibition space.