Stephanie Jünemann 2013, acryl, photo, acrylic glass, 40 × 35 cm (detail)

TakepART is a project based on co-working and relies on the collaboration between me as an artist and you as a collector/buyer/interested person in the production of art: www.startnext.de/takepart

What is the project about?
It is dedicated to new kind of artistic production.
As an artist, I would like to form an alliance with you and turn you into a co-producer. I make you the offer to concretely participate in my artistic production, our cooperation goes “hand in hand”. If you support this project, you can follow the creation of the artworks. You can also actively participate by joining in on the production and in the end call a work of art, to which you have personally contributed, your own.

What are the aims and who is the target group?
Everyone interested in becoming personally involved in the production of art and in co-producing a joint work. The aim is a direct collaboration that already starts in the production phase between me as an artist and you as a collector/buyer. Give me a photographic reproduction of your hand so that I can use it for the work and add a colour form to it. I will then give you the completed work as an original. You can either send me a digital photographic reproduction of your hand or come to my studio for me to take the picture. We additionally agree upon the colours and the title of the piece. TakepArt is a pilot project with which I seek to fathom the extent to which recipients can and would like to take part in the production beyond the role of a viewer.

Why should this project be supported?
Because together we would like to find out which participatory possibilities artistic production can offer the artist and the recipient/art lover. Seeing and buying is one thing, takepART is the other; concepts such as “shareconomy”, “cloud computing”, “crowdfunding” and “co-working” describe the change in society’s understanding of possessing and sharing. These present-day developments increasingly influence contemporary art, as well. Therefore, a platform such as Startnext appears ideal for putting the concept to practice and taking new paths in artistic production.
In addition to the joint works created in the frame of the project, you, as a supporter, will receive exclusive gifts including signed postcards of the produced pieces or signed photographic reproductions as prints or on aluminium Dibond. If the project is very successful and gains especially many supporters, I will finally document all works in a publication/catalogue in which all supporters are named. You will have the exclusive opportunity not only to follow and support an extraordinary experiment, but also to be a decisive part of it.

What will be done with the money in case of successful financing?
With 500.00 euros, you will become a co-producer and receive one of the two created artworks, I will keep the other. So we not only share the input but also the output. The production costs of the joint pieces and the gifts for the supporters are financed with this money. Moreover, in the event of an especially huge response, I am planning to produce a documentation/catalogue of the project. Measured by the market value of my artworks, you receive the work for half the price, meaning that we also share in this respect.

Who is behind the project?
As a fine artist, I am active as a producer and also as a mediator and teacher at the art academy and in educational projects at schools. As a painter with a conceptual, abstract approach, I always seek to deal with colour as a material and with its concrete conditions. My theme is painting as such, regarding both the method and the qualities of the materials. In 2012, I began creating a series of colour studies attributing the material of colour a further meaning. I would like to lend colour a corporeality or concreteness, give it a form and give rise to various impressions of consistencies. In doing so, I set the “colour bodies” in relation to figurative elements, for example, my hand, and pictorially create an interaction between figure and colour meant to induce a sensual/haptic experience and contact with the colour.
So far, I have used the reproduction of my hands for these pieces. It is now my intention to have people interested in art participate in the artistic production by including their hands in the picture and involving them in the production process beyond the role of a recipient. They contribute something personal to the realisation of the work and participate.

Please takepArt!
www.startnext.de/takepart
www.SJuenemann.de

www.Ku-Bi.st