ART HEALS

For many, Art in the City first appears as something uninvited—suddenly present, simply there. Yet our perception of things and situations evolves: what already exists is reinterpreted, and spaces take on new meanings.
  
Erik Göngrich conceives and presents art as a cycle. It is never a finished object, but an ongoing process—both in content and in form.
The recycling of materials, ideas, and stories always gives rise to something new. This process becomes tangible in the poster: alongside cars—on seemingly oversized highways—and threatening images of forest fires, the words ART HEALS appear. Especially in contrast to the clouds of smoke its meaning shifts: art not only demonstrates its healing power in the use and further development of what already exists but also reveals how closely it is linked to our present.

The images, drawn from 2003, refer to a shared responsibility for how we treat our environment: in this sense, the mobile house, which can be moved again and again and enlarged or reduced in size as needed, suddenly becomes an entropic sculpture by Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark.
Here, recycling and reuse are understood not just as ecological practices, but as cultural and social necessities.
Göngrich's work therefore asks: Could art itself—understood as a process of re-responsibility—be a healing act?

Erik Göngrich is an artist working in the public domain dealing with artistic and climatic questions. He is using various methods of collaborations in his urban praxis. His working tools could be exhibitions, guided tours, documentary sculptures, books, architectural pavilions, furniture and cooking sessions. Existing spatial and social situations become the starting point for a multi-year, often collaborative process in which a time-, user-, and location-specific work of art is developed. The Satellit, a collaboratively curated project space in Berlin, can also be understood in this sense. With the Mitkunstzentrale and the Pilz-Kunst-Labor in the Haus der Materialisierung—a center for climate-friendly resource use located in the Haus der Statistik on Alexanderplatz in Berlin since 2020—he initiated a workshop for collective knowledge production. By recycling materials, ideas, and stories, it addresses material cycles, art, the public sphere, and society in times of climate emergency.