Art is not a self-contained product or event, divorced from the particulars of everyday life and independent of its social circumstances. Art, whichever form it takes, not only bears an intellectual relation to reality, it is molded in an active engagement with the world. Joseph Beuys put it succinctly when he called for the union of art and life. Ever since humans, more than 40,000 years ago, produced the first cave paintings, using colors and materials to fashion manifestations inspired by reality has been a foundational principle of human expression. The creative process in which a work comes into being opens up a different access to things that might otherwise remain closed and obscure to us. The exhibition gathers a selection of works in a wide variety of media by German and international artists from the Hildebrand Collection. A sustained reflection on their specific relation to the world yields a broad range of nuanced answers.