En plen air
2026
Düsseldorf/Emsdetten
En plen air
Motorhomes, campervans and caravans symbolise big dreams and longings, and appeal to a deeply rooted human need: to set off, to be on the move, to discover new places. They embody freedom and mobility without having to sacrifice the comfort of one’s own bed or the security of home.
The work cycle ‘En plein Air / Unter freiem Himmel’ explores this form of temporary coexistence.
Through concrete models, films and watercolours, the work examines spatial practices from the world of motorhomes, where ‘living’ is intertwined with imaginings of landscape, freedom and security.
Escape to Nature. 2025
Concrete, light projections
Nine concrete models of mobile homes become ‘Ruhender Verkehr’ (akin to the work of the same name by Wolf Vostell, 1969). Petrified and immobilised, only light projections move across their concrete bodies. They project the model names – categorised into nine groups (Charisma, Nobility, Emotion, Power, Cosmos, Privilege, Nature, Nomad) – onto the concrete sides of the vehicles as a promise of mobility and freedom.
Vantasy. 2025
10 watercolours, 60×80 cm; 3 watercolours, 30×40 cm. 2025
A series of watercolours exploring the décor of motorhome sites.
Carousel: Been Everywhere. 2025
5-channel video installation. Monitors, camping stools
Been Everywhere is a film installation that depicts the endless journey of campers on European motorways. Five monitors arranged in a circle create a carousel-like setting, at the centre of which four camping stools invite visitors to linger. The screens show landscape images edited together from 400 clips, filmed from a moving car. At regular intervals, caravans and motorhomes glide through the images in slow motion – always the same, yet always different. The circular arrangement links the sequences together to form a hypnotic tracking shot with no beginning and no end. The motorhomes move seemingly endlessly in a circle, creating a peculiar landscape.
Désire En Plein Air. 2025
Short film, 8 mins. Sound: Frauke Berg 2025
Names and interiors of mobile homes that suggest a sense of identity are presented in rapid succession.
Oliver Gather, En Plein Air, Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf, 2025
Escape to Nature. Concrete, Light Projection, Welkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf, 2025
©Jana Buch
Carousel: Been everywhere. 5-channel video installation
Monitors, camping stools,
Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf, 2025
©Jana Buch
Désire En Plein Air, short film
Düsseldorf, 2025
©Jana Buch
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Situated right next to a caravan site, the Galerie Münsterland invites you to the exhibition ‘Oase Emsdetten’.
Here, the artists Oliver Gather and Katharina Maderthaner explore two poles of coexistence:
the need for safe, secure comfort and the simultaneous yearning for freedom.
The concept of home is in flux – and a field of tension unfolds between the interior and the outside world, raising questions about 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.
Escape to nature, "Oase" Emsdetten 2026
Escape to nature, "Oase" Emsdetten 2026
Carousel, "Oase" Emsdetten 2026
Vantasy, "Oase" Emsdetten 2026
Désire en plein Air, "Oase" Emsdetten 2026
Floor plan, "Oase" Emsdetten 2026