Hanne Darboven & Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt

Exhibition through February 2026
By Appointment Only

Isestraße 125, 20149 Hamburg
office@klosterfeldeedition.de

Hanne Darboven and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt belong to a generation of conceptual artists who worked in two different political systems: Darboven in the Federal Republic of Germany and Wolf-Rehfeldt in the GDR.
They worked systematically, playing through structural variations, numerical sequences and series. With pen (Darboven) and typewriter (Wolf-Rehfeldt), they created notations consisting of lines, letters and numbers.
Darboven’s works give shape to time and document periods, usually spanning years, in multimedia installations. In her ‘typewritings,’ Wolf-Rehfeldt combines letters and numbers on paper to create playful language images that move between concrete poetry, drawing and graphics.

Both are isolated and connected figures. After her stay in New York, Darboven returned to Hamburg and lived in her parental villa, which she never left again during her lifetime. Successful at a young age, she participated in the most important international art exhibitions of the West.
Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, constrained by the restrictive policies of the GDR, had no possibility to travel or exhibit. She became part of the international Mail-Art Movement, sending her works out into the world. Success came to her in later years: in 2012, she had her first solo exhibition in Germany.

Their artistic practice is writing. Unlike Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt’s, Darboven’s ‘“script”’ knows neither words nor letters. Methodically adapted to the law of time, her calendars carry out the ever same: each month begins with 1 and ends with 30 or 31. Darboven’s script is impersonal; she herself spoke of writing without describing.
Ruth Wolf Rehfeldt’s writing creates images from letters, numbers and punctuation marks. Like many works of concrete poetry, they build a semantic bridge to connect form with content. Often, the graphic itself becomes part of the meaning.

Both artists address political themes in their work: Wolf-Rehfeldt repeatedly focuses on environmental destruction, while Darboven’s work increasingly develops into a commemorative exploration of politics, history and intellectual history.
In Darboven’s work, critical engagement is central, and post-war conceptual art was received in the West at that time – and still is today – as a critique of art as a commodity.
Ruth Wolf Rehfeldt’s art was also a resistive response to the political conditions in the GDR. This showed when she stopped working after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Why send works out into the world when one can now travel?
Both belong to the same generation, yet developed their artistic practice in different political systems, as a response to and in dialogue with their times.

The exhibition features installations by Hanne Darboven, as well as works by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, including her well-known ‘typewritings’ and paintings.

The works of Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt are kindly provided by Galerie ChertLüdde, Berlin, which also manages her estate.