City Advents 2024 – Man, … where are you?

The City Advent has been held at the same time as the Münster Christmas markets for 20 years. It is a reminder that Advent has always been a time of preparation for the celebration of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, and can therefore also be a time of conversion, expectation and anticipation today. It is an invitation to believers and non-believers alike to be surprised and questioned in the atmosphere of the church and exhibition space, to forget the small and unimportant things of everyday life for a while and to reflect on what is essential to our humanity.

Through photos and a TV broadcast, the directors and employees of the City Advent became aware of Aron Demetz's work. Over the course of the past year, they were able to get to know the artist personally and speak to him. After making contact, a visit by the directors to Wolkenstein, an exchange of ideas in Münster and a tour of the Überwasserkirche, Aron Demetz agreed to organize the City Advent 2024 with the team.

In his work over the last few years, Aron Demetz has concentrated on using the design of his sculptures to explore what makes people human: outside and inside, matter and form, surface and depth, physicality and soul, frailty and beauty, connection to space and time, origin and future, becoming and passing away, hope and faith.

The City Advent 2024, entitled "Man, where are you?", is about the same question, but based on the religious-church tradition. The hermeneutic basis is the biblical story of Genesis, from which the title is taken. The third chapter of the book of Genesis asks very specifically where Adam, the human, is, that is, about his current, spatially and temporally determined, always provisional and uncertain, but thus also future-oriented situation. Adam the human has lost paradise, he has become insecure, his nakedness becomes a problem, he knows he is unprotected and will become unstable. Expulsion, work, effort and finally death are his fate. And despite everything: Eve is considered the mother of life, God's care applies to Adam and Eve, they do not remain naked, they remain protected, it goes on.

This story of the expulsion from paradise symbolizes the fragility of human existence and human coexistence, and by that it means what we are currently experiencing in the world: nationalism, xenophobia, war, environmental destruction and climate catastrophes, a completely new and disturbing dimension of the threat to creation, human behavior that could hardly be worse and more stupid. In the context of Advent expectation, however, the question also arises as to what we should still expect and hope for, when and how the promised care will take place, where and how this God will be with us and come to us. One answer lies in the hope of the Christmas event, the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, and that means that according to Christian belief, the eternal God takes on human physicality and will redeem it from all lack and loss through suffering and death.

In Cityadvent 2024, artistic and religious questions meet and complement each other. The sculptures, as designed by Aron Demetz, show greatness and open spaces in human existence with almost biblical force. They inspire us to marvel, to ask questions and to search for our own story of life. A prerequisite is attentive observation. In conversation with the artist, it became clear again and again how precisely he chooses his material, how he assesses its changes and how he changes it in the formal language of his art so that it can gain ethical and existential meaning. It shows change and transience, but the sculptures also point to healing and an inner, mysteriously undestroyed and possibly indestructible dignity.

Visitors are therefore invited to engage with the works of Aron Demetz and to ask themselves the deeply Advent question:

Man...where are you?

Artist: Aron Demetz, St. Ulrich, South Tyrol

Artistic Director, Curator: Rupert König, Church Foyer, Münster

Project management: Markus Kortewille

Text: Klaus Herold