Wounds and wonders in bodies

An exhibition of the Berlin artist Micha Brendel in the Medical Historical Museum of the Charite Berlin, the Museum for Sepulchral Culture Kassel, the Phyletic Museum and the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Jena.

Four different museums at three different locations are putting works by Micha Brendel on display: The special attraction: art meets medical history, mourning culture and biological development history. The organic and therefore life-giving is focus of the exhibitions and present in all collections in their respective orientation. Brendel's art wants to discover common and divisive elements behind the meaty façade. To achieve this, selected exhibits from the collections are confronted with his artistic objects.  This juxtaposition can reveal unexpected relationships between artistic, medical and cultural-historical objects in a fascinating confrontation of similarity and dissimilarity, purpose and mimicry, material and symbolic connections.

Since the 1980s Micha Brendel has used mainly organic materials such as bones, internal organs and blood in his works. By opting for the material and instruments of zoological anatomy, Brendel has left the conventional sphere of artistic forms and opened up a new area of material. He experiments with his objects at the interface of anatomy and sculpture, of medicine and art.