(ICONS) - Altarbilder // Stephane Leonard

In the organizer's words:

Vernissage: 20.03.2026, 7 pm.

Artist Talk: 02.05.2026, 3 pm.

Finssage: Series "Visible Music" with the Emsemble CROMBF

02.05.2026, 19.30. Doors open at 20.00.

Exhibition: 21.03. - 02.05.2025

Opening hours: Thurs. and Fri. 16 - 19, Sat. 14 - 17 o'clock

Location: raum404, Nicolaistrasse 34/36, 20195 Bremen

Contact: https://kulturbuero-bremen.de/ // 0152 24847575

With the exhibition Icons, Kulturnetz e.V is once again inviting the artist Stephane Leonard to his former home to present his work.

Shifting in an ambiguous space between drawing, print and painting, Leonard's works fit into the curatorial concept of raum404, which occupies this ambiguous space with its program design.

Working at the interface between graphics, illustration and comics, writing and language have always been a central theme for Kulturnetz e.V..

In the exhibition (ICONS) - Altarpieces, Leonard directs our attention to writing, but not to writing in its function of conveying a concrete meaning. Instead, it is about writing as a reference structure. Meaning is produced, but does not merge into the sign, but refers to a space of possibility in an unfinished state.

Writing in historical images does not always appear as legible text. In late medieval altarpieces, there are often banners and inscriptions that are used in fragments or are difficult to decipher: They mark meaning without making it unambiguous. In Orthodox icons, on the other hand, writing is an integral part of the image, not as a narrative language, but as a timeless sign of divine presence (such as the letters IC XC for Christ or MP-ΘΥ for the Mother of God).

Traces of this historical practice can be found in (ICONS) altarpieces. Here, writing is not created as a medium of information, but as an open space of perception. The reduction and fragmentation - similar to the icon - creates empty spaces and resonance, so that meaning is not predetermined but is created in the viewer. However, the fragments do not make references to religion, but to pop culture, in that song lyrics, lines from novels or artists (Charli XCX) can be found there. The partly illegible writing becomes a metaphor for real and current longings, hopes and the search for emotional depth in everyday life. It does not refer to something clearly definable, but to what we sense, remember or hope for in the unfinished.