Almut Linde
Between Conformity and Resistance

2 MAY until 14 JUN 2025
Opening – 2 MAY 2025, 6-9 pm

Understanding Almut Linde’s work is about recognizing the right questions, the ones weaving the social and artistic tissue of each piece. Whose voices, amongst the resounding masses, are really being heard? How is safety defined in a society that seems to be attacking our rights at every corner? What drives people to destroy, to become vandals? In a dense network of control and alienation, can the result of repetitive work be considered composition? 

The exhibition Between Conformity and Resistance brings together three early and progressive works that set the tone for Linde’s artistic process as early as the 1990s, amongst which one participatory work is reactivated and juxtaposed with its earlier forms. During that time, Linde was already asking questions about the social and institutional conditions of people far removed from the ecosystem of art, making their actions in it a fundamental part of her practice. Actions not for the sake of actions, but to create works as progressive formulations of inherently generative forces – and also direct attention to blind spots in perception.  

The essence of her work lies precisely in the inclusion of processes and people in extreme existential or precarious situations, starting out with this local instance of reality and revealing the unconscious structures of its social system. Anonymous participants from seemingly invisible spaces are given a voice that’s projected into a space created for visibility: the White Cube. Fragments of their unvarnished reality plaster its walls.  

By deliberately handing over part of the creative power to others, significant interpersonal and aesthetic forms are created.  These forms are what Linde focuses on. Drawing from the concept of a ‘holistic’ form in the tradition of minimalist thinking, where its aesthetic complexity is absorbed instantly by the viewer, she extends its scope integrating the context – causes and consequences – into its composition.  By taking herself out of the actual shaping process as an artist mirroring a minimalist approach (developing possibilities of expression in which minimal actions generate maximal effects) and, following conceptual art, only setting the frame or concept precisely, Linde invites questioning about the conflicts between individual autonomy and social constraints – or between conformity and resistance.

From 1997 to 2001, Linde noticed numerous headrests, in various conditions, along the tracks of the Hamburg Hbf – Ahrensburg S-Bahn commuter line. The headrests came from the 1st class compartments of the S-Bahn, which could also be used with discounted tickets issued to welfare recipients outside rush hours. These acts of vandalism led to 1st class being abolished by Deutsche Bahn in Hamburg’s S-Bahn trains in 2002. Pinpointing the underlying destructive rage of alienation, the now-individualized, originally mass-produced objects have been photographed and collected by the artist in the series Dirty – Minimal #16.1 – Headrests Individualized by Vandalism (1997-2001). 

In Dirty Minimal #9.1 – Postal Logistics Center (1992), Linde recorded the endless movements of the logistics employees, who tirelessly run and walk in a confined space within an hour, by simply laying out paper on the floor of the postal distribution center. Over the course of an hour, the footprints and tire impressions of workers and machines emerged as a kind of painterly gesture; functional processes determined the composition.

In 1994, Linde commissioned the market research institute Infas GmbH to draw up an official questionnaire and conduct a survey on personal well-being and safety. The survey was carried out by Infas employees in public places in Hamburg. The randomly selected participants marked their answers on a transparent film on the survey sheet and connected them with a line. This resulted in a series of individual drawings, collected in Dirty Minimal #12.1 – State of Being. Although each individual slide is unique, the overall result is predictable. 

Now, in 2025, Almut Linde will hand out this questionnaire again to visitors of the exhibition. The resulting transparent films will be hung up opposite those from 1994, highlighting how the network of our social systems and relationships to each other has been woven in the course of 30 years, and how our feelings of safety – those lines on a sheet of film – are perhaps no sturdier than a loose thread.

For Linde, “the system” does not exist as an independent, singular entity. There are people and norms that configure a system which is everchanging, as social rules are being negotiated. Between Conformity and Resistance exists on the playing field of this discussion, inviting viewers into the grey area of its dichotomy only to greet them with a window view on the captivity of conformity. Conformist behavior causes resistance and resistance causes conformity; but art cannot stop pushing the scale. It, by its very nature, holds up a mirror on the pain caused by our oppressive ties, urging us to resist and dismantle them, rip them, burn them. 

Sometimes, the social stakes manage to get pushed forward; other times, those ropes get swung tighter and tighter around us. In any case, Linde’s mirror is crystal-clear.