“Dreams are my reality” - Claus Richter (born 1971) made use of this well-known 1980s pop song title as the heading of one his essays which illustrate his double talent as an artist and researcher and are of central importance for his artistic practice. Claus Richter is interested in artificial worlds as the site of artistic imagination. He is in pursuit of them and he finds them in such remote regions as the castles and garden of the (black) romantic and King Ludwig II of Bavaria, in the first so-called dark rides from around the turn of the century, in amusement parks such as Disneyland, in vaudeville and show business, in the genre of science fiction and the music videos of recent decades. Claus Richter investigations into these dream worlds are systematic and scientific as well as creatively appropriative at the same time. His work comprises a wide range of live performances, lectures, and films as well as site-specific installations, smaller objects (which often develop an independent existence) in addition to carefully selected material collections. His stagings seize on (historic) models from the entertainment world and bridge the gap to the present-day art world. In Braunschweig he presents one of his works produced on site in the Kunstverein.

Two Barnum Egress Drifts opens the “Staging” exhibition cycle in the Cuboid with a small bang: “Step right up and come in!” Two communicating tubes await us, special kinds of drifts! They are the sets of a film whose plot seems familiar to us. It is the story of the secret tunnel, the story of breaking in and breaking out, which is always the story of escape and the dream of a better world – somewhere else. Claus Richter has staged it in Braunschweig and turned the Villa Salve Hospes into the showplace of these longings. In the tradition of the American showman P. T. Barnum, who attained fame as the impresario of a cabinet of curiosity by offering “something for everyone” and by maneuvering his public with a so-called “egress” orientation system, Claus Richter entices us and the protagonists of the film in the into the tunnels, at the ends of which a supposedly better life awaits us. We look forward with anticipation to what will happen.