Broken Feathers - Cas Bochner

My series Broken Feathers is part of the group exhibition “Of Leaving and Becoming”, alongside Lucia Marcano and Katie Amaroux.

📍 Werkhalle, Cologne-Ehrenfeld , Venloer Str. 506 / Hinterhof, 50825 Köln
🗓 Fri, Sep 11, 2026, Opening 6 PM ,
Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12–8 PM Sun,
Sep 13, 2026, 10 AM–4 PM

Essay about the exhibiton “Of Leaving and Becoming”

By Wolfgang Zurborn, Lichtblick Köln

For Lucia Marcano, Katie Amaroux and Cas Bochner, a recent change of location marks a profound break with their daily routines; whilst this is painful for them, it is also perceived as a great opportunity to experience their living environment more intensely. Nothing can be taken for granted any longer; instead, everything is redefined through different subjective perspectives and made tangible through the senses. It is particularly through the interplay of sculpture and photography that the artistic approaches gain expressive power, as the precision in the depiction of specific places and the physical presence of the objects in the exhibition space mutually reinforce one another. The photographic images are freed from the pressure to convey unambiguous realities, and the monochrome, natural-coloured sculptures, through their contextualisation with the photographs, embody the process of leaving and becoming in a deeply emotional way.

In his series “Broken Feathers”, Cas Bochner embarks on a deeply personal search for home. For him, however, this is more about an emotional sense of belonging than a national one. Bathed in magical light, the flora and fauna of his surroundings transform into a dream world in which ambivalent feelings, oscillating between fear and hope, are expressed. Even though people are often only latently present in the photographs, they play an important role in the narrative of the images. They seem to want to grasp nature with their hands in order to become one with it.

Although their artistic strategies differ, the three works presented in the exhibition “Of Leaving and Becoming” are united by the fact that, through their work, the artists engage in an open-ended process in which they cannot know at the outset exactly what will emerge in the end. Their experiences of radical changes in their living environments have heightened their awareness that it is sometimes important to be able to let go of control. Only then does it become possible to trust one’s intuition and develop the self-confidence needed for such deeply personal perspectives on the world.