Position

Culture, education, and civic life are among the prerequisites of a democratic society. They provide orientation and participation, give experiences and conflicts a language, and keep social connections visible and open to negotiation. In this sense, KM13 is a place for contemporary visual art—not as a backdrop, but as a space for perception, judgment, and discussion. Art is not reduced here to the material work; it is understood as a social practice: the capacity to examine reality and to act upon it through thinking, speaking, and making.

In this understanding, art is not self-evident. It reflects on its own conditions, forms, and claims. The less it can be taken for granted, the more it depends on context, argument, and communication. KM13 offers a framework for this: for exhibitions that do not merely show but also provide reasons; for positions that do not simply affirm but challenge; for encounters that do not consume but seek to understand.

KM13 grew out of a simple experience: the public sphere is not a given space, but something that must be created—through decisions, through context, through conversation. Art matters not only because it is shown, but because it makes another way of seeing possible. KM13 therefore understands exhibition-making as mediation: work on the artwork and on the gaze, a link between artists and those willing to engage. At a time when so much has become interchangeable, KM13 insists on place, precision, and continuity—so that art is not consumed as a signal, but can be experienced as a form of knowledge.

Hubertus Wunschik - an art mediator and gallerist - continues his curatorial practice here, in dialoague with independent curators. The project is complemented by an artist-in-residence format: an apartment and a guest studio enable temporary stays for visiting artists. artcurator.de complements KM13 as a curated online space for offers and the mediation.

The underlying idea and ethos were never new. What is new is how clearly they now emerge as necessary: that art must not only be shown, but grounded, communicated, and taken seriously as a social practice. From this line de DROM e.V. emerged—as a non-profit structure that enables and supports selected projects at the intersection of culture, education, and civic life. This also includes the idea of the Günther Uecker Art Academy: a free, international workshop format in the spirit of Joseph Beuys’s expanded concept of art.

In KM13, all of this comes together—condensed, visible, mutually reinforcing: in the work, in its context, in conversation, and in the quiet work in between..