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16/5/2012

Oh, My Complex

Wurttembergischer Kunstverein WKV, Stuttgart

Artists: Daniel García Andújar | Yvonne P. Doderer / Ute Meta Bauer | Martin Eberle | Michael Fehr / Diethelm Koch | Ludger Gerdes | Kirill Golovchenko | Eiko Grimberg | Justin Hibbs | Jung Yeondoo | Lim Minouk | Noh Suntag | Alfons Pressnitz | Malwine Rafalski | John Smith | Klaus Staeck | The RSA | Tuomas Toivonen / Nene Tsuboi | Brian Ulrich | Michael Vahrenwald | Pablo Wendel | Matthias Zielfeld | and others

From May 17 to July 29, 2012 the Württembergischer Kunstverein will be showing 'Oh, My Complex: On Unease at Beholding the City', an exhibition that approaches the imaginaries, representations, and realities of the city from different directions: from the angle of architectural and urban constructions of the nineteen-thirties through today; from Europe, the USA, South America, and Asia; from the perspectives of art, exhibition, pop, and protest cultures starting from the seventies.

The exhibition is focused on works that trace the ideological entrenchment of urban visions; that is to say, the visions manifesting in modernist urban utopias, in the models of the neoliberal boomtown, but also in those scenarios of crisis that have been inhabiting our collective imaginary worlds since the nineteen-seventies-not least since the bestseller 'The Limits to Growth' (1972) by Dennis Meadows was published.

Along an open parcourse, which connects exterior and interior space, the exhibition presents the works of over twenty artists who have honed in on the urban-development, social, political, and economic lines of conflict within the city. Their works touch upon historical documents and objects from pop- and sub-culture contexts, including music clips or a video, anonymously published on YouTube, documenting a breakneck mountain-bike rally straight on through a favela.

Furthermore, the show takes recourse to two historical exhibitions or exhibition displays that could not be more different in terms of their contexts and motifs. On the one hand, there is the reconstruction of the legendary exhibition 'Über die moderne Art zu leben' (On the Modern Way of Living) analyzing contemporary issues, which Michael Fehr realized at the Museum Bochum in 1977 in collaboration with Diethelm Koch. On the other, there is Martin Eberle's photo documentation of fifty panels from the state architecture academy in Pyongyang that gather together countless icons of world architecture, from the druid stones to the Guggenheim Museum in New York-icons that, in the spirit of socialism, purportedly served as fundus and template for the architectural design of the North Korean capital.

A further spatial and contextual shift is experienced by Ludger Gerdes's neon artwork 'Angst' (Fear; 1989), which will temporarily travel from the town hall of the City of Marl, a structure erected wholly in the tradition of Brutalist architecture, to the Kunstverein's facade. The work is comprised of the italicized yellow word 'Angst' framed by two pictograms: a red golfer and a blue church.

The exhibition title has been borrowed from a video performance by South Korean artist Minouk LIM. Here, a camera pursues a singer who, in the company of a drummer, is riding in a pickup truck through various districts of Seoul while bellowing, in punk style, at this city that has been so strongly influenced by Asian turbo-capitalism. Embodied in this image-portraying a personage laying claim to space and making herself heard against all odds-is essentially the conflict around which the exhibition 'Oh, My Complex' revolves: the controversy about the production, distribution, and utilization of space-and all of the contradictions that go hand in hand with this struggle.

Opening and artist's talk thursday, May 17, 2012, 2 p.m.

Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart
Schlossplatz 2 Stuttgart
Hours: Tue, Thu-Sun: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wed: 11 a.m.-8 p.m.
Admission free

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