Open Call (2013):

Since 2007 the Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung has been granting two advancement awards every year. The open call for the awards of 2014 follows up on that of last year, which carried the title „Realism“. The expression „Out of Focus“ was chosen, again grounded in the wish to fathom different forms and possibilities to deal with the word, the relation between art and the present. „Out of focus“ addresses, maybe paradoxically, essential phenomena, not marginal ones. „Out of Focus“ means the blurrings in the center of „being there“, either those that one looks upon, or those from which one looks. These positions can be exchanged and thus describe an instability, whose out of focus-kernel can remain coherent, and which is generated from the blurring of what one wants and what one does not want. That can mean not wanting to make exhibitions, or maybe no art at all. It can mean to want to be occupied with a café, with coffee or food, with politics, armed conflict, a newspaper, with films, or none of all that.
This can mean, above all, to focus in a blurred way, not to work with categories and classifications, but to be as precise as it is (or seems) neccessary when it comes to the smaller matters. Freely adapded from the motto: Not to see the wood for the trees.

Annette Hans, Aristic Director M.1 2013/14