Category: Current

Opening on Friday, May 16, 2025, 7-9 pm
The artist will be present

The exhibition The Burnt Sea by renowned Australian artist Janet Laurence (b. 1947) presents an installation conceived especially for the Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung. Incorporating Alfred Ehrhardt’s iconic coral photographs from the 1930s and 1940s, Laurence creates an experiential setting that poetically conveys the fragility and loss of the marine world. Printed on nearly weightless silk voile fabric, the coral images appear transformed, fragmented, fragile and vanishing. Lighting and currents of air are used to turn the fabric veils into a floating work of art—as if buffeted about by the ocean’s waves—underlining nature’s ephemeral beauty while also drawing attention to its endangered status.

Opening Hours: Sundays 2-5 pm

Born in Triptis, Alfred Ehrhardt (1901-1984) was one of the few Bauhaus students who earned his living exclusively as a filmmaker and photographer. In 1948, with the support of the British occupation authorities, he founded his own cultural film production company in Hamburg. His first post-war works include a film about the Bordesholm Altar in Schleswig and a two-part cultural film about the life and work of the German sculptor, draughtsman and writer Ernst Barlach (1870-1938). At the time, Ehrhardt was regarded as the “most important German post-war cultural film creator”.