Rundgang prizes awarded in 2025

The Rundgang prizes of the Kunsthochschule Kassel were awarded on Saturday afternoon (26.07.25).

Every year, the Kunsthochschule Kassel awards prizes to students of the Kunsthochschule as part of the annual exhibition with the support of its long-standing prize donors. The prizes are awarded in recognition of the students' work, which they present during the tour.

An expert jury consisting of Ayşe Güleç (educator, author, curator, art mediator, research activist), Dr. Aykan Safoğlu (Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin) and Prof. Dr. Alena Williams (Department of Theory and Mediation of Contemporary Art, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) awarded student works with the Birgitt Bolsmann Prize, the SV SparkassenVersicherung Holding AG Prize and the Prize of the staff of the Kunsthochschule Kassel.

Prize winners 2025 - jury statements:

Prize of the SV SparkassenVersicherung (2,500 euros)

Still There, Berfin Topal (1250 euros)
Every Saturday since 1995, Kurdish families come together at Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square, demanding accountability for the loss of their loved ones kidnapped and murdered by the Turkish state. These protesters in mourning resist easy representation, and defy fragmentation by the police barricades erected on the square in 2018. Berfin Topal's drawings similarly defy fragmentation, spanning representation across time and space onto the ephemeral surface of paper. Weaving different times and spaces beautifully together, the work stands as an act of reconciliation against history’s injustice. In the center of Still There, mother Emine Ocak, who passed away last week, stands out with her staggering facial expression. As a witness to time’s violence, her demand for justice for the murder of her beloved son Hasan Ocak and many other Kurdish children is a strong eulogy to the resilience of Kurdish women and their feminist movement devoted to peace. Topal's practice is attuned to the agency of our times.

ein kinderspiel, robyn / sarah bach (1250 euros)
ein kinderspiel is a work that meditates on transparency. A blindfolded figure finds repetition across a series of images. Superimposed on one of these prints is another viewpoint: children playing on a military tank during the “Hessentag” celebration in the town of Fritzlar in 2024. The multiple layers of the screen print disrupts the space of representation, complicating the work’s visual meaning. Color and collaboration become a “kinderspiel” for the artist robyn / sarah bach. This technique not only speaks to the possibility of contact, but also to camouflage as a political practice of concealment. Through screened palimpsests, it projects the present onto the past and contrasts the seriousness of childhood against the absurdity of modern warfare. The opacity of the gaze remains the central question of ein kinderspiel its orientation is camouflaged. This sense of camouflage—its texture—hints towards possible exit strategies, away from hegemonic regimes of looking and seeing.

Prize of the staff of the Kunsthochschule Kassel (1,100 euros)

Ekstase in fünf Stufen, Mel Reckert (550 euros)
The jury found the formal experimentation of Extase in fünf Stufenan engaging use of woven materials. Expanded into a series of contiguous frames, the painting transforms the two dimensional space of the picture plane into a multidimensional exploration of time. What is most impressive is the way the work explicitly invites the viewer to orientate the body towards the work. The performance becomes a perceptual take in Reckert’s painting practice, making opacity an acute political and phenomenological experience.

Magic Gulyás, Áron Farkas (550 euros)
The fiction animates the story of an unusual friendship. In convincing acts of trust, two characters engage one another in playful leisure activities, slowly developing a deeper connection. In their unconventional use of color and cinematic techniques, the artist convinces viewers that their movements are not in fact an illusion. We perceive them as if we are immersed in the beauty of strange details. Society might view their behavior as rebellious lust; yet, the artist proves to us that “anger” has so many beautiful shades and faces.

Birgitt Bolsmann Prize (1,100 euros)

FMS, Linda Deuse (550 euros)
Linda Deuse dedicates her work to the topic Fibromyalgie-Syndrom—or F.M.S. which is the title of the installation. It consists of a wall text and includes a detailed list of the symptoms of the disease. Deuse explores the effects of the FMS from a medical perspective as well as from a personal point of view. This approach includes a painting of a young woman sitting in a green armchair, looking at us. Alongside this spatial installation is a publication with photos accompanied by short texts describing everyday life with FMS. This interweaving and bringing together of the personal, medical, and social perspectives through the expressive forms of painting, diary, and science speaks to fragility and resilience of everyday life.

Expulsión 1, Expulsión 2, Expulsión 3, Claudia Duensing (550 euros)
Amid an assemblage of domestic household objects—a nightstand with potted plants, nail clippers, empty medicine packets, personal accessories, an animal carved of wood, and an array of knick-knacks and old toys displayed—are three unexpected drawings. Three ink drawings in modest unassuming frames capture intimate birthing scenes. The unusual aspect of this is that the installation is presented here without the typical furniture—a bed, a dresser, or drawers. Yet, they imagine the mother’s presence, reflecting the waking of life and the transformative physiological state of the body and mothering, with the emergence of a second.

Special mention

Träumen Am Stern, Janis Schmidt
A camera pans across a busy intersection—one of the social centers of the city of Kassel—while the voiceover narration features interviews with local inhabitants. Capturing a liminal moment at dusk, the synergy between these two registers of image and sound opens up a rhetorical space of thought and reflection—what Schmidt describes as an “Ort des Dazwischen” (“In-between space”). From a perspective of distance and curiosity, the film’s ambivalence invites a conversation on the ethics of social engagement and observation, on being “in between”. The jury was most impressed with the film's exploration of the topic of dreaming, and the way its stunning cinematography sets the desires of Kassel’s inhabitants against the city’s social and material reality.
 

Rundgang der Kunsthochschule Kassel 2025 - eXtase
The Rundgang 2025 (July 24 to 27) was conceived and realized by an interdisciplinary team of students under the direction of Prof. Bjørn Melhus (Class for Virtual Realities). Many thanks to the jury for their work and to the prize donors! Special thanks also go to the student organizing team of the Rundgang: Chantal Barkhüser and Konrad Winter as well as to the designers of the visual identity of the annual exhibition: Olivia Völlnagel, Newroz Agnes Ayalp, Marie-Luise Fichtner.