Lass es Liebe Sein

Renate Bertlmann

Dorothy Iannone

Martina Kügler

Monika Maurer-Morgenstern

What do we call love? When does physical attraction become desire, friendship become intimacy, and intimacy become vulnerability? And how are our ideas of intimacy formed in the first place—through personal experience, or through images, narratives, and cultural conditioning?⁠

Lass es Liebe sein brings together works by Monika Maurer-Morgenstern (1942 Leipzig, lives in Berlin), Martina Kügler (1945 Schreiberhau, Silesia – 2017 Frankfurt am Main), Dorothy Iannone (1933 Boston, USA – 2022 Berlin), and Renate Bertlmann (1943 Vienna, lives in Vienna). Four distinct artistic practices offer different perspectives on love, desire, friendship, and intimacy—ranging from embodied experience and autobiographical memory to poetic self-empowerment and the visual traditions of culture. Despite their diverse artistic languages, the artists share an interest in how relationships can be made visible—not as fixed or unambiguous states, but as complex experiences shaped by the body, memory, language, and the cultural imagination.⁠