City Gallery

What is the connection between Kiel, the capital of SchleswigHolstein, Germany's most northerly state, and the cities of Scandinavia and the Baltic? The answer is, of course, their location on the Baltic Sea and the commercial contacts. But they also enjoy a lively artistic and cultural exchange. For years Kiel has given an impetus to exhibitions from the Baltic region.

International art from the Baltic region is a programme which the City Gallery has been following since it was opened in 1998. Accommodated up to the end of 1999 in rooms of unusual architectural design inside the "Sophienhof" Shopping Centre, the gallery is now in the "New Town Hall" complex.

Contemporary art from the Baltic

The first exhibition in City Gallery was "Riga – Latvian Avant Garde", of 1989. This was followed in the same year by "Structure / Metaphysics – Perspectives of Contemporary Art from Estonia". Further high spots in this series were "Face to Face", the first Ars Baltica exhibition of 1994; "Pictures have Memories – Contemporary Photography from the Baltic" (1993); "Self Identification – Attitudes in St. Petersburg Art from 1970 to the Present Day" (1994); "Escape – Absence –Disappearance. Conceptual Art from Moscow" (1996); "NOR • A • WAY – Young Norwegian Artists" (1997); "Adventure into the Unknown – Attitudes in Contemporary Art from Finland" (1998); and photographic installations by Lena Liv (1998). "Can you hear me?" was the title of the Second Ars Baltica photography triennial, held in December 1999. "Wonderful Copenhagen – Current Art from Denmark" is running in November, and this exhibition is a continuation of earlier work focusing on particular countries.

ArtGenda

Involving artists from Kiel in "ArtGenda", the biennial festival for young artists in the main artistic centres of northern Europe, is another line which the City Gallery has been following since 1996. As part of the City's Cultural Department, it sees international exchanges as an essential ingredient in the encouragement of art. Kiel was represented at Copenhagen in 1996, and at Stockholm in 1998. This led to "ArtGenda Retro", an exhibition featuring selected works of artists from a number of countries who had taken part in Stockholm, which the City Gallery showed in the same year. This year has seen a multi-media project in Helsinki, produced jointly by creative artists, video artists, actors and a dancer.