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The annual Rundgang of an art school in Germany is the ideal opportunity for art students to present their work to the public. Even though it often has to defy itself as being a “mass exhibition”, a show like this can bring over a 100 artists together, it works as an open-studio event. Process-based presentations show the pieces in their point of origin, whilst the visitor can meet the artist in his working environment.

The Städelschule in Frankfurt is particularly well reputed for putting on a large scale “group exhibition”. Having visited the Rundgang in Frankfurt for the first time, it was obvious that it was aiming for focus and a certain reduction in the display of works. The decision to not segment the show into classes, which would reinforce a connection between student and course leader (among them Judith Hopf, Michael Krebber, Peter Fischli and Douglas Gordon), disconnected the individual students from an alleged authority.

Here are some examples of works that stood out:

Victoria Colmegna’s installation Amateur Dramatics (2014) is an interesting way of thinking about old school trends and their seasonal appearance. The work consists of a collection of hand painted and printed T-shirts. By neglecting the canvas and instead using textile as a basis, the work is connected to a discourse around painting and its representation. In this case especially in terms of plagiarism as the artist explicitly refers to Francis Picabia’s paintings.

It is a playful display with pool noodles as arm surrogates thrown in the mix. Whilst selling her work in the studio for art market prices, she was also offering digitally printed editions that were produced as so-called merchandise. A second collection of works was titled I want to get excited in the music industry (2014) and consisted of six dresses made from ready-made urban tribe T-shirts in combination with 50’s glam patterns and a medieval knit. An interesting approach of interwining different industries and their significance in a contemporary art context.

Painting as a medium was also relevant in the discussion of several other artists’ work. Sofia Duchovny’s process-based approach, for example, is almost a manifesto for not working within the conventions of the medium. By creating through destruction, her work is reminiscent of what was once on canvas. Duchovny has sanded off paintings and applied the dust on the walls and floor. The resin-cast sculptures (Untitled, 2014), imply the idea of destruction as a source to create something new.

Additionally, she presented a publication of a collection of stock images that also relate to the idea of paint and colour as something that can get out of control. Duchovny evades the painting as a given and rather works through different media to contribute to this particular discussion.

Jasmin Werner’s approach is to decontextualise and place a given content in a new environment. Pangi Metamorphosis, for example, is a beach towel of which the design is based on that of skirts of the Maroon culture of Surinam, worn during traditional dance performances. This research-based work is presented in combination with a sculpture made of modelling clay: New Watch Good Times. The hanging pieces in her studio are confronted with these concrete sculptures on the floor.

As for materiality, the artist James Gregory Atkinson and Helen Demisch’s installation moved from moving image to painting, combining this with a material mix between synthetic fabrics, colour and textures. The work is an arrangement of various single works that form a composition. The centre piece, Charade, is surrounded by different elements that work with a specific colour scheme: the green background of the video scenery, the green paintings, as well as the bright yellow Spongebob finger nails in the video.

In Charade they re-enact a false sign language. Atkinson and Demisch have a very interesting way of exploring certain semiotics in various media of male urban street fashion as a symbol for (mis)translations of cultural and gender contexts.

Archival moments are also the focus of Ani Schulze’s installation Cinema House Oliveira (2013/2014). The centre of the piece is a digitalized 16mm film. The film deals with the question how film can function as a medium that measures and frames time, and how filmic memory works or could work. The installation refers to aspects of mirroring and projection and is framed by three screen prints that traverse different forms of filmic narrative.

Patrick Cole’s work begins with written fiction, the navigation of constructed worlds. These worlds work with a lose science-fiction type of narrative but are at the same time similar to our current society in the sense that they also have their own particular systems and ways of doing things.

These sci-fi narratives deal with slightly exaggerated, everyday problems and seem to be an attempt of the artist to deal with relationships and human interactions. Cole performs his narratives as monologues, accompanied by sets and props. His performance Bogside Quagmire, for example, is about a "bad breaker upper" who works in a factory that is slowly sinking into a swamp.

These kinds of works and performative interventions open up and ease along a big group show like the Rundgang, and create space for further discussion, within an institution and beyond.