The Villa Romana Fellowship, awarded to exceptional young talents since 1905, includes a stipend and a residency program, allowing fellows to live and work for ten months in the artists’ house in Florence. This art prize is not just the oldest in Germany, but it also represents Deutsche Bank's longest cultural commitment. The presentation at the Deutsche Guggenheim marks a new milestone in the institution’s partnership with the arts, while also continuing the series of exhibitions conceived by Deutsche Bank within its joint venture with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

“Freisteller” was curated by Angelika Stepken, Director of the Villa Romana. The fellows were selected by the Berlin artist Ayse Erkmen and the art historian Beatrice von Bismarck from Leipzig.

The German term “Freisteller”, used in photography, printing and computer graphics, describes an image that is cut out from its background and context in order to insert it into a new composition. “Freisteller” is also the title of the current exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim, introducing the Villa Romana Fellows - four young artists with diverse biographies and nationalities working in various media. At first glance, Dani Gal, Julia Schmidt, Asli Sungu and Clemens von Wedemeyer seem to have only two things in common: they live and work in Germany, and they will now spend time together in a new cultural and geographical environment – as residents of the renowned artists’ house in the hills of Florence.

Yet, as the exhibition title suggests, the selected artists share a number of common interests and strategies, specifically in the field of photography. They disconnect motifs and themes from their original context and, through this process of “cutting out,” open onto new discursive relations.

The exhibition “Freisteller” documents how an institution like the Villa Romana, rich in tradition and far from the great metropolitan centers, can succeed in becoming a creative think tank of contemporary art and a place for intercultural exchange. Equally notable is the fact that the Villa Romana Fellows are now for the first time presented at the Deutsche Guggenheim. The affiliation between both institutions establishes a public forum that is capable of reflecting authentically the vital, internationally oriented art scene in Germany.

To celebrate the selection of the Villa Romana as a “Landmark in the Land of Ideas,” Angelika Stepken, director of the artists’ house and curator of the exhibition, conducted a guided tour on May 30.

On the occasion of the current exhibition, a catalogue was published in German/English and German/Italian with texts and artist interviews by Clemens Krümmel, Bert Rebhandl, Angelika Stepken and René Zechlin.