On 18 June 2026 my exhibition „Komm nur herein, ich öffne dir mein ganzes Herz“ („Come right in, I open my whole heart to you“) opened at the Oberkirche St. Nikolai in Cottbus. The opening words were spoken by Tobias Hohenberger of the Pax-Bank für Kirche und Caritas. His address captured the evening and this remarkable space in a way that moved me deeply. I am glad to share it here in full.
„Space comes into being through presence“
Opening address by Tobias Hohenberger, 18 June 2026
Ladies and gentlemen, dear art lovers, dear guests from Cottbus and beyond,
I am delighted to welcome you all here this evening in the Oberkirche St. Nikolai. A warm greeting goes to the parish council, to Pastor Katrin Rebiger and to everyone who opens this historic place so generously to contemporary art. And a very special, warm welcome of course to the woman we have all come together for tonight: welcome, dear Sylvia Wolff!
If we take this philosophical proposition, that space comes into being only through presence, as our intellectual foundation tonight, then it means something radical for all of us. It means that this monumental Gothic sacred building is, in this moment, not a rigid historical container of brick and mortar. This church is not a mere backdrop into which one simply places people and hangs pictures on the walls.
No. This space is constituting itself right now. It comes into being through the relational arrangement of all of us. It comes into being through the sound of your steps on the tiles, through the collective murmur, through the resonance of your gazes and the energy you have brought here from your everyday lives. Space is not a state. Space is a practice. Space is an event that we enact together in this very moment.
My own personal connection to this exhibition, by the way, began at a moment when none of tonight’s energy could yet be felt. It was on one of those typical grey January days this year. The world outside was colourless, the sky dull, when the everyday post reached me. Among the pile was a thicker envelope with handwriting I could not place at first. A riddle in the mailbag. But one look inside the letter solved the mystery: out came Sylvia Wolff’s 2026 calendar.
In the middle of that grey winter day, colours suddenly exploded and a fine poetry transformed my office and my day. That is when I sensed what Sylvia’s art does at its core: it does not wait for good weather, it creates its own light.
And it is precisely into this sociological and emotional field of force that this exhibition now breaks. It does so with a title that challenges us intellectually, perhaps even disarms us: „Komm nur herein, ich öffne dir mein ganzes Herz“, come right in, I open my whole heart to you.
What an invitation! And what a spirited, almost daring contrast to the place in which we find ourselves.
Consider the field of tension: on one side stands this vast medieval church. A space that for centuries was designed to evoke awe, transcendence and a certain holy distance. The aim of the Gothic was to open the human being, through the experience of their own insignificance, to the overwhelming greatness of God.
And on the other side now stands Sylvia Wolff, breaking open this venerable distance with a single, radically intimate sentence: come right in, I open my whole heart to you.
This is the opposite of academic coldness. It is the opposite of that aloof coolness we so often encounter in the contemporary art scene, where works hide behind cryptic texts so as not to reveal too much of themselves. Sylvia Wolff refuses this game of hide and seek. She does not practise intellectual secrecy; she risks something instead: she risks absolute openness. She shifts the centre of reception away from pure, detached analysis towards radical encounter.
Anyone who knows Sylvia Wolff’s work, her sensitive, luminous pastels, her meditative pictorial worlds and the fine texts that often accompany them, knows that this art calls for a very particular form of presence. It calls for our emotional presence. You cannot surf past these works in the mode of a fleeting passer-by. You cannot consume them. They demand dialogue and they leave room for interpretation.
Sylvia Wolff stages here a visual phenomenology of love and trust. When she says „I open my whole heart to you“, this is not sentimental kitsch but a profoundly intellectual offer. It is the offer to make one’s own self permeable to the other.
How this openness manifests itself concretely in the art becomes clear when we let our gaze wander through the nave.
Look at the painting „Berührung“ („Touch“):
Houses full of teeming life and everyday madness, behind every window lives a story, lives her story, and yet there is something else, a gap, an angel connecting the earthly with the divine, a suggested figure turns away, the touch of the angel stands for those moments in life when we sense that there is something more, that there is more.
Or the painting „Auf dem Weg“ („On the Way“):
In the midst of blooming, colourful life, in the here and now, a couple in happiness on the path of life. A guardian angel accompanies them on the way through their time, the path connects heaven and earth, beginning and end, alpha and omega. What is the goal at the end of the way? The circles grow tighter, a kind of labyrinth, we push the everyday aside.
In all these works we sense that Sylvia Wolff is drawing a geometry of the heart.
And how wonderfully this pictorial openness corresponds with the architecture! If we look closely, this church too opens its interior to us. Sacred architecture is always also an architecture of transition, from the noise of the street into the stillness within. Sylvia Wolff takes up this architectural gesture and transforms it: the architectural interior becomes an interior of the soul. The artist’s opened heart becomes a resonant space for our own thoughts, our longings, our questions and perhaps our inner doubts as well.
It is an intellectual pleasure to watch how these two poles come together this evening. The sacred, history-laden dignity of St. Nikolai in Cottbus joins with the lively, shimmering, colour-intense intimacy of the paintings. The works do not float in isolation in the space; they enter into a dialogue with the old stones, with the light breaking through the windows, and, this is the most important point, with you and with us.
Art does not exist in a vacuum. A picture stored unseen in a dark studio is a potential possibility, but not yet an aesthetic reality. Only in the presence of the viewer, only in your presence, does the friction arise, does the spark arise, does meaning arise. Only through your looking is the work completed.
So tonight we are not merely invited to consume or to make small talk. We are invited to be co-artists of this evening. We are asked to leave the comfort zone of pure, safe distance. So do not step through the door of this church only physically. Step in spiritually. Take up the artist’s offer.
Take the opportunity tonight not only to think about the art, but to speak with it directly. Sylvia Wolff is here this evening, she is present, and she looks forward to the conversation, to your questions, your impressions and a stimulating exchange of thoughts with you.
And for all of you who notice that this opened heart of art radiates so much light that you would most like to take it home with you, to protect your own four walls permanently against grey January days: I am told that one may not only contemplate these pictures intensely, but also acquire them, quite officially and entirely legally. So secure your own piece of warm-heartedness in good time, before someone else does!
Be spirited in thought, be brave in feeling, allow yourself to be touched. Take the time to linger before the works. Sense how the colours work in the room, how the texts echo in the mind.
Let us fill this space with life together. Let us be present, with an alert mind and an open visor. For only through our shared presence does this opened heart of art become a living, pulsing place.
I thank the parish for this wonderful place, I thank Sylvia Wolff for her courage to radical beauty and openness, and I thank you all for being here and for your attention.
Tobias Hohenberger
Pax-Bank für Kirche und Caritas eG
To these words I have little to add, only a heartfelt thank you. If you happen to be in Cottbus in the coming weeks, I warmly invite you to come by. The paintings are waiting, through 4 October 2026.