Arnis. Wer derzeit den Sitzungssaal des Arnisser Rathauses betritt, ist zunächst verblüfft, bleibt stehen und schaut dann genauer hin. Von allen Wänden, aus allen Ecken und Engen und sogar vom Fußboden blicken ihm neugierig große Augen von “hoffnungsvollen Monstern und anderen kleinen Narren” entgegen. Gemalt auf Segeltuch, Abdeckplanen und Kartoffelsäcken gehören sie zur jüngsten Ausstellung im Rathaus, präsentiert von Inger-Kristina Wegener aus Büdelsdorf bei Rendsburg.

Die 45-Jährige nennt ihre Acryl- und Ölbilder auf ungewöhnlichem Malgrund “Fidibus”, schwarzer Kobold”, “Monsterdrachen, “Gänsemagd” oder “Heimchen im goldenen Käfig” – allesamt fröhlich und immer wieder überraschend. Und alle haben Gebrauchsspuren als Indiz dafür, dass sie schon auf anderen Ausstellungen zu sehen waren – weltweit. Was den robusten Malgrund betrifft, fühlt sich die Künstlerin der nordischen Tradition verbunden. Ihre Segeltuch-, Abdeckplanen- und Kartoffelsackbilder lassen sich zusammenrollen und so problemlos transportieren.

Erst vor einem Jahr ist Inger-Kristina Wegener mit ihren Töchtern Zoé (13) und Phoebe (10) – beide sind in den USA geboren – nach mehreren Jahren des Lebens und künstlerischen Schaffens aus New York nach Deutschland zurückgekehrt. In Büdelsdorf arbeitet sie als Rechtsanwältin mit dem Spezialgebiet Kunst und Recht, ist für die “NordArt” in der Carlshütte tätig. Die Beweggründe, in Arnis auszustellen, liegen für Wegener auf der Hand. In ihrem Herzen sei sie ein bisschen Arnisserin, gesteht sie. Die gebürtige Kielerin verbrachte ihre Sommerferien stets in Arnis bei “Tante Dorte”. Damit meint sie Dorte Jaich, die sich ihrerseits über die Grenzen der Stadt hinaus als Kunstschaffende einen Namen gemacht hat.

In Berlin studierte Inger-Kristina Wegener Jura und bei dem belgischen Maler Roger Servais Bühnenbildgestaltung und freie Malerei. Ihr juristisches Referendariat absolvierte sie in Schleswig und Kappeln – während dieser zwei Jahre lebte sie in Arnis und verbringt jetzt in der Schleistadt einen Kurzurlaub. Das bedeutet, dass sie bis einschließlich Sonnabend, 9. Juli, zur Stelle ist, wenn das Rathaus seine Türen von 13 bis 15 Uhr für ihre Ausstellung öffnet. Danach sind die “Monstern und Narren” bis zum 28. Juli während der üblichen Rathaus-Öffnungszeiten zu sehen.

Despite the fact that I had been sleeping all day I was exhausted. I felt that if I wanted to have a chance to actually leave the house in the morning, I would be well advised not to sleep in my own room this night. I yawned and turned off Phoebe’s desk light. The room was immediately filled with the grey shadowless otherlight that I had been observing before though that night it failed to make me happy. I could have added to my list: “The light is shimmering, it is the otherlight”. It seemed to me that I was caught in a parallel universe where everything was an exact replica of my regular world – with the exception of myself who was just passing through. Hopefully. For a moment it occurred to me that every world I might experience was just a replica of some unknown original, a restaging, but I hastily left that thought because it caused vertigo.  I took off my jeans and slid under Phoebe’s bedcovers, disturbing her neatly arranged stuffed animals. I looked for Ms. Little Bear, pulled her under the covers and took her in my arms. “Don’t you worry, Ms. Little Bear,” I told her, “everything will be OK. I promise.” Curling up around her in a fetal position I went to sleep.

I sat down at Phoebe’s desk. Why did I feel so strange? I took a red pencil out of a pencil box and tore a letter size sheet of stationary from a block. It was printed with drawings of meadow flowers and ladybugs, a typical little girl letter set.

I started writing, filling the candy colored paper with simple sentences. Later  on I folded the sheet and filed it in my journal. The flowers and ladybugs give a cheerful, crazy character to my non-sensical statements:

Where is Phoebe? At Ally’s house?

The colors in the house are too bright, especially the blues and reds.

The edges of all objects are too precise.

The pancakes are too even.

Time is warped.

The woman in the kitchen is not my mother.

I saw a girl living in a blind man’s glasses.

I am going insane.

At this point I stopped. I thought of Penelope Hoffmann in her curved office. I had wanted to visit her today but something – or someone – had hindered me. That also was something that could not be proven.

The muted green and white neon lights of the book franchise and a coffee store melted in the dark reflection of shallow puddles over new tar with the circus red lights of a franchise family restaurant branch. For a moment she could hear the animals restlessly pacing in their cages, but the impression faded quickly and made space for the mundane evening traffic of the mall. Families kept arriving to spend a Friday evening searching for a way to wile away some hours for the prize of coffee and a magazine. She held a door to a young mother pushing a stroller with a sleeping toddler. More families passed through the parallel doors, and for a moment the circus was back, forever lurking in her mind, waiting for just about any reason to manifest itself. People in anticipation of a spectacle streaming into the big top tent. She let go of the handle and followed a family with two young kids passing through the small foyer and the second set of doors that echoed the first. The father of the family dropped the door on her, she caught it with her shoulder without a moment of surprise.  The whole family then stopped right in front of her to perform the incoming routine, willfully ignorant of whoever should be behind them. Kids immediately shedding their coats into their parents’ expecting hands and taking off towards the kids’ book section. Battery powered books, stuffed character animals and a wooden train table all well within kids’ reach had nationwide proven to be wildly popular with the preschool through elementary school set. The mother feebly called out some warnings and then both parents, strangers to each other now that the kids were gone, walked towards the café to satisfy their craving for caffeine and sugar to get them through the evening and were immediately lost in the crowd of customers stopping at sales tables long enough to scan the back of a book cover or to flip through a brightly illustrated volume of some sort.