The wooden ball fidgets nervously, unable to escape.

She is "held in the tongs", as the kinetic object by the artist Kai Wolf is called, quite literally.

Working with found, discarded objects, Wolf clamps his colorful balls between the jaws of large industrial tongs from which they cannot escape.

You can get anxious just watching, and maybe some of you will remember the tight lockdown times in apartments without a balcony.

Andrea Diener

Correspondent in the Main-Taunus district

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The second edition of the Taunus Art Triennial was three times as big.

It was no longer just the Main-Taunus district that was represented; artists from Hochtaunus and Rhein-Taunus were also invited to submit works on the subject of “Masked Ball”.

A "supposedly playful theme," said Birgit Müller-Muth from the Kunstverein Hofheim.

But in the past two years, the mask has acquired a meaning that gives the subject a new seriousness.

"The Corona measures have led to the emergence of an everyday masked ball," added Inga Remmers, head of the city museum and host of the exhibition.

The time of the pandemic left no one untouched, and many artists lost an additional income.

In his fine etchings, Heinz Wallisch shows empty rooms, including an empty exhibition room in which the works await visitors.

Christian Paulsen uses a photograph for his large-format desk still life “Homeoffice”.

And Youngwha Song lets eyeballs crawl through the room on red strands in an impressive installation.

Masked ball also means to see and not to be seen.

Others take the play with the paper object more literally, like Barbara Heier-Rainer, who stages the FFP2 mask as an everyday accessory that complements the repertoire of the most important objects.

"Keys, mobile phone, wallet, mask," is how Remmers sums up the new arsenal of things that you say to yourself before you leave the house.

Remmers was also part of the jury that selected the 28 artists and planned the exhibition together with the Kunstverein and the city.

Artists with thematically appropriate works could apply from May onwards.

"We want to offer artists in the region a contemporary forum," said Hofheim's first city councilor, Wolfgang Exner, who represented the ailing mayor.

The fourth in the group of organizers is the Kulturfonds Rhein-Main, represented on the day of the opening by the curator and deputy managing director Julia Cloot.

The networking of artists in the three districts is "an ideal-typical project" that the culture fund was happy to support.

"You can see immediately that the works have international quality."

The triennial "Maskenball" will be shown in the Stadtmuseum Hofheim until February 19, as well as in the two branches "Café Momento" in Hof Ehry on Burgstraße and in the Atelier Haindl on Bärengasse.

The Triennale will be accompanied by guided tours, lectures, workshops and performances.