'Outside world' was not chosen randomly as a theme, says Heijne: "It really matters to me. Art does not necessarily have to be politically engaged, but I think it should be about how you can intervene imaginatively in the intangible, mysterious reality. It’s interesting how your view of reality can be altered because an artist places elements in a different context that changes their meaning. An example is the movie Goodbye Lenin. Reality is manipulated in such a way that the world becomes exotic, while it remains actually very drab. The contemporary mass culture allows an artist to express what the world does to him, in a way that in turn makes others think about themselves and their place in the world. Our ideas change, we become different. In that sense, intervention in reality delivers something."

According to the guest curator, putting together the exhibition has substantially changed his gaze. He explains how that happened by way of two paintings by Peter Brunsmann. A blue painting with the text: 'Neighborhood racial composition and percent indicating they would feel uncomfortable' with neatly painted statistics that underpin the fact that people feel increasingly insecure as more 'blacks' move in. The other, a red cloth also contains a chart and the text: 'Effect of deflated price of cotton on number of black lynch victims'. Heijne: "It must be in the 1930s when racism was rampant. The rawest period in history is captured in statistics by the artist in an entirely impersonal way. Only he did not look to do this through realism but chose to make it even more abstract by capturing it in a painting. This way it pierces you three times as hard. Those quasi-scientific statistics, the ridiculous dryness, evoke an enormous amount. I'm shocked by it. In less suggestive terms, the hanging news photos that have become icons, elicit the same feeling. These works turn the world upside down and not out of recalcitrance or spielerei.”

Translated by Allison van Vlerken

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