Tote Ratten und Gummibärchen

Paintings. Literature. Performance.

Dead rats and gummy bears

Of light heaviness and heavy lightness

You normally see moving paintings in galleries or museums. But now everything is different. The Waiblingen painter Jan F. Welker is showing numerous paintings as part of an entertaining evening program. Together with the writers Kai Bliesener and Joachim Speidel and the theater maker Jochen Faber, the project "Tote Ratten und Gummibärchen" (Dead Rats and Gummy Bears) was created.

Inspired by the great originals, the authors have written literary miniatures and short stories, some of which they will present on this evening. The respective painting is more than just a backdrop, it is part of the story.

The puppet theater provides serious and comical commentaries and mini-dramas by a human-sized rat figure and her smaller colleagues on the powerful images and texts.

This colorful mixture is humorous, socially critical, political, but above all enormously entertaining.

"We've had nothing but positive and enthusiastic feedback about the whole evening and the artists," says organizer Ina Kern about the sold-out premiere evening on 8 March 2024.

"It was simply good. A great evening!" added one participant.

Welker's work focuses on people and their fate in all its existential breadth. The authors and the theater maker explore this framework and thus bring the images closer to the audience. Sometimes carefree and light in a floating state of happiness, then again plunging into fateful moments. It is always a look into the abysses of human existence: personal, historical or political. Human beauty in its grace and sensuality is just as much a theme as the ugly sides - poverty, excess, despair, brutality and violence.

Paintings, literature and performance are so closely interwoven that something quite unique emerges: a journey through light heaviness and heavy lightness.

The meeting of these four very different artists has now resulted in a special and particularly beautiful book, which was published by Early Bird Books in March 2024.

www.rattenbaerchen.de