Loving feasting

The summer exhibition at the Cismar Monastery bears the title “Loving feasting”. The Berlin photographers and designers Sebastian Köpcke and Volker Weinhold have developed cultural historical exhibitions for more than two decades and try to impart their own perspective with their work. If the most valuable precious items are presented to the visitors in the best light, both collection photographers can discover worlds unknown to them to a large extent in the portfolios.

Admont monastery in Styria (like Cismar a Benedictine monastery) invited the Berlin photographers to provide an artistic intervention on the topic of “Loving feasting”. In the Natural History Museum on-site, they had the opportunity to interpret historical specimens with items from the Cultural Historical Museum and precious books from the world’s largest monastery library freely and unite them as artistic still lifes.

The Admont photo series may occasionally remind us of hunting and kitchen still lifes from the renaissance, of the cryptic Arcimboldo portraits and of the style-defining music placards from Günther Kieser. With this, Köpcke and Weinhold succeed in bridging the gap between the past and the present.

Moreover, the kitchen ladies determine the present in Admont. Their rigid regime determines the rhythm of life in the monastery, the regular meals structure the day. Therefore, they can be seen as vibrant personalities in the exhibition.

In 2016, “Loving feasting” was shown for the first time with large format photographs as an annual exhibition at the Admont Benedictine Monastery. These pictures from Sebastian Köpcke and Volker Weinhold reflect the genius loci, which is nurtured by pleasant solitude, an awe-inspiring landscape, the strict daily set of rules, the cultivated dignity of the Admont monks and in particular from the reliable art of cooking practised by the gracious kitchen ladies.