Ersan Mondtag, Nadim Samman: Alternde Meister

As part of Berlin Art Week, Ersan Mondtag and Nadim Samman stage a dialogue between 25 performers and the collection of the Gemäldegalerie. Confronting the pictorial worlds of the Old Masters with the transience of contemporary bodies and biographies, the performance unfolds as a bridge between theatre and museum. A living tableau emerges, revolving around exhaustion and renewal, disappearance and endurance. _Alternde Meister_ connects the mythical temporality of religious and allegorical imagery with the lived time of artists and their careers. At the same time, the work offers a collective portrait of Berlin, a city that built its identity over recent decades on youth and freedom, and now finds itself confronting the fractures within the narrative. Throughout each presentation, the performance repeats in a continuous 30-minute cycle. At the beginning of every sequence, the performers remain motionless in different galleries, appearing among the paintings as though they belonged to the museum's collection. Gradually they come to life, dress themselves, and carry out individual actions before gathering for a collective ceremony. The group then disperses, and a new cycle begins. The dramaturgy draws on Lucas Cranach the Elder's _The Fountain of Youth_ (1546), a meditation on ageing and morality. Rather than preparing for a celebration, however, the performers assemble for a funeral. In each cycle, one performer becomes the focus of the ceremony and is mourned by the others. Accompanied by Gustav Mahler's _Kindertotenlieder,_ the ritual ultimately transforms grief into shared laughter, before the performers freeze once more in tableau where mourning and vitality converge. Running concurrently at DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, _Dispair_ extends many of the questions explored in _Alternde Meister_ into sculpture and installation. Developed specifically for the exhibition, the new body of work comprises monumental sculptures in carbonized wood alongside reliefs in wood and silicone, approaching memory as something that becomes materially inscribed in bodies and objects. Across both projects, Mondtag examines mortality, desire, and collective memory, understanding material itself as a carrier of time, transformation, and lived experience.