Sister City's Surrealist Brings Art to Glenview

The work of renowned German artist Detlef Allenberg is on display at Glenview Mansion through Sept. 28.

The exhibit is sponsored by the Rockville Sister City Corporation, which was established in 1987 to plan and support exchange programs and intercultural activities between Rockville and Pinneberg. Allenberg is a board member of the Pinneberg German-American Society, the German counterpart to the Rockville Sister City Corporation.

An opening reception was held on Sept. 9.

Allenberg's 30-piece multi-media show includes works in graphite, colored pencil, acrylic paint, charcoal and ink. They portray recurring chimeric figures from the artist's imagination, such as humanized fishlike or the "bird-person." Several of his intaglio prints, multimedia drawings, relief prints and paintings depict frames within frames and transparent subjects. 

"We don't know if we are the same people that look in the mirror that come back out," he said.

Manipulating symmetry, Allenberg often arranges found objects in different positions in his relief prints to carve delicately rendered figures out of the paper, likening the process to the evolution of an alphabet. Sometimes he uses air brushing and stenciling techniques to achieve soft color gradient transitions between forms.

Allenberg explores evolutionary history through surrealistic recombinations in his work.

"The Classical philosopher Heraclitus said 'everything is in motion.' For me, this means that if you look at the molecular structure of things, you can detect motion," he said.

Allenberg outlined two ways to work in art. One is through abstraction of a real object on the picture plane. The other—his way—is "starting with a drip or a color and enhancing it in action and reaction until it is finished," he said. He described his process as an adventure lacking an initial preconception.

RSSC board member Rotraut Bockstahler and her family are hosting Allenberg and his wife during their stay in Rockville.

"This is another mosaic stone we add to the friendship puzzle between the Rockville Sister City Corporation and the Pinneberg German-American Society," she said of the exhibit.

"The arts are by far the most powerful instrument of communication, whether personal or international," she said. "It is important that the arts remain strong in educating our children."

Bernd Hinrichs, president of the Pinneberg German-American Society called the event an "exciting cultural exchange" and acknowledged the contributions of exhibit curator Julie Farrell.

Farrell, who has curated 64 shows at Glenview including this one, described Allenberg's work as "filled with the unexpected and with things that break through dimensions."

"It reminds me that everything is not doom and gloom and a terrorist attack. You can tell that he sees the joy in things," she said at the opening reception, two days before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Allenberg, who has been practicing art since 1963, offered a free drawing workshop to the public at the Rockville Civic Center on Sunday.