OSTRALE Biennale O25 - 15th International Exhibition of Contemporary Art
For the 15th time, the OSTRALE - Centre for Contemporary Art is organising its international exhibition of contemporary art, in 2025 from 7 June to 5 October in the robotron canteen in the heart of Dresden. June to 5 October, in the robotron canteen in the heart of Dresden and at other locations.
THEME O25
Dialogue Colour / ZWISCHENTÖNE(N) / Mother-of-pearl / infinite blue / Dear colours, ... / Blue Light / Evergreen / Wavelength / ... (working title)
"Colour is a force that directly influences the soul." - Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
"Those who think in black and white dread shades." - Jürgen Wilbert (1945)
We are living in worrying times in which existential crises and challenges are never-ending: The effects of the global pandemic, inflation and the tangible consequences of climate change, wars such as in Ukraine and the Middle East as well as increasing radicalisation of society, populism and growing xenophobia are depressing realities.
What is the role of art in our present? What is its effectiveness? What can art do for dialogue, tolerance, democracy and peace? Are individual and social changes possible through engagement with art?
We believe that art, as a transformative aesthetic experience, has the ability to trigger deep emotions, awaken the imagination, open up new perspectives and provide food for thought that stimulates dialogue, discourse and our coexistence. Through sensory experience and its own language, art is able to open up complex thematic structures for everyone.
Colours play an important role in the process of perception as a means of visual design. As the sensory media of our observation and imagination, colours have a direct effect on thoughts and feelings and play an important role in the process of visual communication. Colours are carriers of emotions and have an effect on mental and physical processes. Obviously, colours have powers with which we humans relate in a positive or negative way.
Colours form a complex communication system for the perception of which living beings use a large part of their neuronal capacity. They are indicators of the health and well-being of humans and nature. We consciously or unconsciously adopt basic biological functions such as warning, deterrence and communication with the environment in our cultural interaction.
Colours offer identification. As an expression of civil protest movements, they stand for social upheaval, are symbols of resistance and embody the hope for a better world without threats and external constraints.
The more colourful we are able to think, the more peaceful our interactions with each other can be.