The exhibition ‘ELSEWHERE provincial perspectives’ puts the periphery center stage and invites a view behind the scenes of lustrous cultural representation. In thirteen large-format paintings in sober contrast to the Goethe Institute’s opulent décor, Cambridge-based painter Wilhelm Neusser celebrates the melancholic beauty of the so-called province. 

Berlin’s the place, no question! It may be poor, but it is definitely sexy! Here big politics and high culture are made. Berlin attracts those who want to feel the pulse of the times. An avant-garde fights here unafraid of the future.

Province is always ‘elsewhere,’ far away from the capital. Here buses run less regularly, doctors practice in the next largest town, and the local library is managed by volunteers in their mid-seventies who have trouble with the online catalog.

While the big city never sleeps the province is thought to be sleepy, depressed and left behind. Whoever wants to make it moves to Berlin. Whoever has made it though can survive in the province. Pitied as the home of those who have always lived there, those who move there praise it as idyllic. Whether as origin or as refuge ‘elsewhere’ defines us. 

The exhibition ‘ELSEWHERE provincial perspectives’ puts the periphery center stage, questioning prevailing perceptions of the province. Thirteen large-format paintings made for the Boston Goethe Institute open up perspectives on a landscape whose spectacular quality is their melancholy. In sober contrast to the opulent Chippendale décor, the paintings celebrate the unique character of areas that appear on every map, yet are rarely the focus of our attention. 

Elsewhere - 13 Paintings by Wilhelm Neusser, Article by Jim Kiely