Bird space

That moment when a carpet of blackbirds covers the entire landscape.

↘ ABOUT THE PROJECT

In his artistic projects, Oliver Gather often takes on the role of an anthropologist or sociologist. He observes the

passions and habits of those around him, and in doing so uncovers some of the peculiarities of our forms of communication

and our coexistence.

From 1 May to 20 July 2026, Oliver Gather is out and about in Krefeld and

the surrounding area. His research focuses on the space created by birds through their song, and how ornithologists

and bird enthusiasts perceive it. Through conversations with experts from NABU or during long walks

with amateur birdwatchers, Gather observes the observers and thus approaches a particular “knowledge scene”

dedicated to establishing contact with these feathered species.

Preliminary results and materials are being collected at the )PFÖRTNERLOGE(.

If you are interested, you can contact the artist at o.gather@gmx.de

or via Signal on 017622004726.

↘ PROJECT PRESENTATION

Friday, 10 July 2026, 7 pm

Welcome: Paul Wans, BBK-Niederrhein e. V.

Introduction: Emmanuel Mir, art educator

Further dates: www.diepfoertnerloge.de

or at the gatehouse window.

↘ PFÖRTNERLOGE

Process-oriented art in Krefeld at Fabrik Heeder,

Virchowstraße 130, 47805 Krefeld, curated by Anne Fiedler,

Emmanuel Mir and Judith Anna Schmidt

More information at: www.diepfoertnerloge.de,

www.bbk-niederrhein.de, Instagram: @bbk_niederrhein,

or at the gatehouse window.

The series ) PFÖRTNERLOGE ( – process-oriented art is organised by BBK-Niederrhein

e. V. and supported by the Cultural Office of the City of Krefeld.

Kunsthalle Düsseldorf: The Forest as Echo

Tini Aliman / Soya Arakawa / Natasha Barrett / Alessandra Eramo / Oliver Gather / Hanne Lippard / Mélia Roger / Miki Yui

• 19.06 – 21.06.2026

Programm  https://www.kunsthalle-duesseldorf.de/ausstellungen/forest_as_echo/#programm

Sonntag, 21.06.2026

18 – 19.00 Uhr

Oliver Gather – Tempus Fugit

Weyhe Park 

Treffpunkt am Jan-Wellem-Brunnen

Ernst-Poensgen-Allee

40629 Düsseldorf

Um Pünktlichkeit wird gebeten.

You are cordially invited to the opening: Sunday, 31 May 2026, 5 pm

Located right next to a caravan site, Galerie Münsterland invites you to the exhibition ‘Oase Emsdetten’.
Here, artists Oliver Gather and Katharina Maderthaner explore two poles of coexistence:
the need for safe, secure comfort and the simultaneous urge for freedom.
Living is in flux – and a field of tension unfolds between the interior and the outside world, raising questions of retreat, mobility and self-positioning.
Using a variety of media and materials – from cast concrete and ceramics to large-scale installations and video works, right through to watercolours – Gather and Maderthaner develop a multi-layered reflection on freedom as a spatial, social and emotional category.

Boot Soup (31 May 2026, 5 pm)
With Boot Soup, the neighbouring caravan site becomes the starting point
for a performance by Oliver Gather and Katharina Maderthaner.
Soup is served from a mini camper van –
on a gravel site between a stopover and a possible destination.

Visitors to the exhibition and users of the caravan site are equally invited.

You are cordially invited to the opening:

Sunday, 26 April 2026, 11.30 am

Welcome address:
Mayor Oliver Kellner

Introduction:
Nina Valavuo, Artistic Director of the Kunstverein Galerie Münsterland

Boot Soup:
Sunday, 31 May 2026, 5 pm

Closing event:
Sunday, 28 June 2026, 4 pm

Further supporting programme:
galeriemuensterland.de

Opening hours:
Thursday & Friday 4pm – 7pm
Saturday 3pm – 6pm
Sunday 11am – 6pm

Galerie Münsterland e. V.
Friedrichstraße 3
48282 Emsdetten

Finally! After having to cancel our performative installation last year due to a storm, we are delighted to invite you now:
Soil Patches / Bodenflecken

Program May 8 and 9 2026

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM Anti ‘Solastalgia’ walk with Stefan Cools and Sandra van den Beuken.
12:30–1:00 p.m. Lunch
1:00–2:30 p.m. Performance & workshop by Frauke Berg & Oliver Gather
2:30–3:00 p.m. Artist talk led by Celien Govaerts (Bonnefanten)
3:00–4:00 p.m. Do’s and drinks: workshop combined with drinks

A PET bottle equipped with a camera moves across the soil crust of four immediately adjacent landscape structures—
the highway, Maastricht Airport, a meadow with a former landfill site, and a commercial forest.
The resulting images will be displayed in the middle of these structures, on a meadow orchard.
We search—deliberately awkwardly, tentatively, clumsily—for new perspectives that do not objectify the landscape, but emerge from it.
With “two left hands,” we explore not despite, but precisely because of our inadequacies – as “speculative fabulation.”

A co-production between the Bonnefanten Museum @bonnefanten and the foundation @thebutterflyhouse_nl in Maastricht.
Part of the festival “Blunderen – the art of failure in the face of ecosystem breakdown.”
Curated by Celien Govaerts, Bonnefanten Museum Maastricht, Stephan Cools, and Sandra van den Beuken, Butterflyhouse Foundation.

Saturday, October 25, and Sunday, October 26, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. each day,
followed by an artist talk (in English) and workshop

At the orchard meadow
Op ‘t Rentelen, Trentelenweg, 6199 AD Bunde near Maastricht, Netherlands 50.899233, 5.749798

On Friday, November 14, I will open the exhibition “En plein Air / Under the Open Sky”
at Weltkunstzimmer Düsseldorf

The new work cycle En plein Air / Under the Open Sky also deals with how we live together.
Using concrete models, films, and watercolors, the work explores the world of the motorhome,
where living is linked to imaginations of landscape and freedom.

Opening: Friday, November 14, 6:00 p.m.
Opening hours: Thursday–Sunday, 4:00–8:00 p.m.

Duration: 14.11-30.11.25

Weltkunstzimmer
Ronsdorfer Str. 77a
40233 Düsseldorf

Free admission

Finally! After having to cancel our performative installation last year due to a storm, we are delighted to invite you now:
Soil Patches / Bodenflecken

Program May 8 and 9

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM Anti ‘Solastalgia’ walk with Stefan Cools and Sandra van den Beuken.
12:30–1:00 p.m. Lunch
1:00–2:30 p.m. Performance & workshop by Frauke Berg & Oliver Gather
2:30–3:00 p.m. Artist talk led by Celien Govaerts (Bonnefanten)
3:00–4:00 p.m. Do’s and drinks: workshop combined with drinks

A PET bottle equipped with a camera moves across the soil crust of four immediately adjacent landscape structures—
the highway, Maastricht Airport, a meadow with a former landfill site, and a commercial forest.
The resulting images will be displayed in the middle of these structures, on a meadow orchard.
We search—deliberately awkwardly, tentatively, clumsily—for new perspectives that do not objectify the landscape, but emerge from it.
With “two left hands,” we explore not despite, but precisely because of our inadequacies – as “speculative fabulation.”

A co-production between the Bonnefanten Museum @bonnefanten and the foundation @thebutterflyhouse_nl in Maastricht.
Part of the festival “Blunderen – the art of failure in the face of ecosystem breakdown.”
Curated by Celien Govaerts, Bonnefanten Museum Maastricht, Stephan Cools, and Sandra van den Beuken, Butterflyhouse Foundation.

Saturday, October 25, and Sunday, October 26, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. each day,
followed by an artist talk (in English) and workshop

At the orchard meadow
Op ‘t Rentelen, Trentelenweg, 6199 AD Bunde near Maastricht, Netherlands 50.899233, 5.749798

Parrots and swans

Do you live with plants? Do you have a special relationship with a houseplant? In this workshop, we will talk with and about your plant. Together we will approach it in an unusual way – with pencil and ink. The result will be simple, personal drawings.

Oliver Gather draws your favorite plant and invites you to do the same. No previous knowledge is required. Please bring your houseplant with you.
Special offer: Home visit For this workshop, home visits are also possible outside office hours, during which Oliver Gather will get to know your plant in its everyday home.

Please call 0176 2200 4726.
Thurs., 14.8., Thurs., 21.8., 28.8. 3.30 – 5.30 pm or 6 – 8 pm.

Information and registration: VHS Ratingen or mail@parrotsandswans.com

Parrots and swans
Oliver Gather, Tanja Kodlin

Get to know Tanja Kodlin and Oliver Gather and their approaches to their work during a preparatory walk. You will learn more about the places where their workshops will take place.

Monday, July 14, 2025 5.00-6.30 pm
Meeting point: Berliner Platz
Information and registration:
VHS Ratingen or mail@parrotsandswans.com

Caspar David Friedrich’s idea of tracing inner landscapes in the seclusion of a monk’s cell was taken up and at the same time counteracted by the sparse but anything but neutral sleeping quarters in the Loitz LPG barack from the 1960s. I offensively used their atmospheric dominance for an expanding spatial vision. Inside the bedroom, the “Chair billow” rises from the pillow. It is based on Friedrich’s landscape constructions (The Sea of Ice, 1824, The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818). Just as in Friedrich’s paintings small figures refer to the dimensions of his landscapes, in Chair billow small models of chairs from the barrack scale the chair structure into a gigantic, traumatic scenery. Staged theater lighting (Tombs of Old Heroes, 1812) highlights the small chair actors in the chair structure.

The installation is complemented by the film “The small bay, barely perceptible from the shore” and photographs of high seats, which were also taken in Loitz (2018) and also deal with the oscillation between inside and outside.

++++

BU´s: Installationsansichten Künstler Gut Loitz

Link zu NDR Film: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/k2dB8qxgEtYRGBBv57o

The labyrinth is the largest walk-in sculpture by Erwin Heerich. After more than three years of refurbishment, it has been presented since the end of June with new energy efficiency and beauty. The glass roof, specially developed for the building, creates a uniform, warm and unique lighting experience, and the labyrinth can be experienced in its pure sculptural form before the collection of European modern art, Far Eastern art and archaeological finds moves back in in the fall. It also serves as an inspiring place for short artistic contributions such as performances, music, sound installations or surprising presentations.
August 17, 2024, 1 to 4 pm
Frauke Berg, Oliver Gather and Anja Lautermann: sounds for a wounded landscape
Frauke Berg and Anja Lautermann play and listen into the large hole of the Garzweiler open-cast mine as a self-experiment. In the labyrinth, Berg and Lautermann continue the sound experiment live, accompanied by Gather on film.
https://www.inselhombroich.de

The labyrinth is the largest walk-in sculpture by Erwin Heerich. After more than three years of refurbishment, it has been presented since the end of June with new energy efficiency and beauty. The glass roof, specially developed for the building, creates a uniform, warm and unique lighting experience, and the labyrinth can be experienced in its pure sculptural form before the collection of European modern art, Far Eastern art and archaeological finds moves back in in the fall. It also serves as an inspiring place for short artistic contributions such as performances, music, sound installations or surprising presentations.
August 11, 2024, 1 to 4 p.m.
Oliver Gather: Tempus Fugit. The vinyl record “Tempus Fugit” invites you to lose time. It will be used for three hours of meditative listening in the labyrinth.

https://www.inselhombroich.de

Catalog for the exhibition at the Kunstverein Alte Schule Baruth. Water – scarcity or abundance?

Water as an artistic idea and material 20.08. – 10.09.2023 Opening 19.08.2023

With works by Joschi Baudach, Dietmar Brandt, Frauke Berg, Jana Debrodt, Astrid Drechsler, Nora Fuchs, Oliver Gather, Gisela Kleinlein, Renate Löbbecke, Kevin Lüdicke, Christian Andreas Müller, Silke Panknin, Sandro Porcu, Sandra Schindler, Dirk Skreber, Jan Trinkaus, Heinrich Weid, Andreas M. Wiese, Karsten Wittke, Jeongkyoung Woo, Francis Zeischegg
alte schule baruth.de

Saturday, 27.01.2024 at 16:00, Edelsteingarten Pulheim, meeting point at the Saphirallee parking lot.
Tanja Kodlin and Ramón Graefenstein have accepted the position of Schmuckeremit 2023 offered by Oliver Gather, listened into the settlement, captured wishes and desires and woven them into a dense associative image. As a summary of their work, they present a final performative intervention.
Course of the project: After extensive research in the Pulheim urban area (as part of the Stadtbild.Intervenion. projects for Pulheim), the artist Oliver Gather decided on an intervention in the Edelsteingarten. With the promising name of the settlement in his ear, he investigated the yearnings of the residents of the relatively new residential area. In the course of his research, he also came across a historical job advertisement in which an 18th century English nobleman was looking for a “hermit” for his landscape garden to enliven and decorate the artificial parkland.
As the historical landscape garden and today’s residential areas are often both stagings of an illusion of nature, Gather’s idea was born: For the gemstone garden, he would look for a jewelry designer based on the historical model. His job advertisement in the specialist magazine “Kunstforum” invited “professional artists and performers” to develop a proposal for an intervention that would address the longings and dreams of the residents.
Six performers applied for the role and presented themselves with short performances in a public casting in August 2022. The jury, which also included residents of the Edelsteingarten, ultimately chose Tanja Kodlin and Ramon Graefenstein with their project “Safari” as the future Schmuckeremites.
www.derschmuckeremit.de