Practic_Transform'25, a project led by Katharina Maderthaner, in EX NIHILO at Kunsthalle Barmen

Kunsthalle Barmen, Wuppertal, Germany
17 October – 14 December 2025

Practic_Transform'25, a project developed in a course led by the artist and professor Katharina Maderthaner, is part of EX NIHILO – Prozesse künstlerischer Arbeit at Kunsthalle Barmen in Wuppertal, on view from 17 October to 14 December 2025. The starting point is practic, a craft and building magazine published in the German Democratic Republic at the time of the shortage economy. Second-semester students of Industrial Design at Bergische Universität Wuppertal took up selected building instructions from the magazine and transformed them: a cap became a salt-crystal object, a bread basket was made from old bread. The students wrote new instructions and gathered them in a new issue of practic, which documents the works and is offered as an open-source project. The exhibition questions the idea of artistic creation out of nothing.

Kunsthalle Barmen — EX NIHILOBergische Universität Wuppertal, Industrial Design — news of 17 October 2025