Andrea Buttner
dal 2/9/2014 al 14/3/2015
Segnalato da
2/9/2014
Andrea Buttner
Museum Ludwig, Koln
2. The largest room in the museum is divided into two parts: in the dark space she is showing her latest video installation, 'Piano Destructions 2014'; in the other she assembles 'Kant's pictures' and assigns them to their corresponding text passages of 'Critique of Judgment'.
Curated by Julia Friedrich
2 – the title is the agenda. The largest room in the museum is divided into two parts, one light
and the other dark. In the dark space Andrea Büttner is showing her latest video installation,
Piano Destructions 2014. Featured here is historical footage of performances in which artists
— almost exlusively men — destroy pianos; as well as a performance of her own, in which
nine female pianists play pieces by Schumann and Chopin in chorus. Two forms of
interacting with the piano are juxtaposed. This confrontation allows for renewed reflection on
gender issues, on the function of the piano as an instrument in the upbringing of young,
bourgeois girls, on performance art and the piano as its classical prop — manipulated and
maltreated in every way imaginable. For a woodcut, Büttner herself disassembled a piano,
using its parts as printing blocks. This generated an abstract image made up of monochrome
color fields that now merely hints at the destruction of the piano to which it owes its
existence.
But 2 can also stand for judging in general, which oscillates between two poles—beautiful
and ugly, cool and embarrassing, important and insignificant. Displayed in the center of the
illuminated section of the exhibition is Kant’s Critique of Judgment, which aims at linking “two
aspects of philosophy,” namely, theory and practice, “into a totality.” Here, Büttner has
chosen an unusual approach. She considers the ways in which specific images correspond
to Kant’s abstract text: the images he may have had in mind while writing, and those that are
envisaged while reading. Through dozens of images — both historical and contemporary —
she makes it possible to perceive Kant’s concepts through the senses. In large offset-prints,
Büttner assembles “Kant’s pictures” and assigns them to their corresponding text passages.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Felix Meiner Verlag is publishing an edition of Kant’s
Critique of Judgement, illustrated by Andrea Büttner.
Andrea Büttner (b. 1972 in Stuttgart) has had solo exhibitions at the Badischer Kunstverein
(Karlsruhe) in 2007, the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 2011, and at the MMK Zollamt
(Museum für Moderne Kunst) in Frankfurt am Main in 2013. She showed her work, Little
Sisters. Luna Parl, at the dOCUMENTA (13). She lives in Frankfurt and in London.
On the opening night of the exhibition, the Museum Ludwig will be screening Büttner’s
complete video works in the auditorium.
Image: Andrea Büttner, Moss, 2010–14. Series of photographs, dimensions variable
Anne Niermann / Leonie Pfennig
Press and Public Relations
+49 (0)221 - 221 - 23491 oder
+49 (0)221 - 221 - 23003
niermann@museum-ludwig.de
pfennig@museum-ludwig.de
Press reception: September 3, 11 a.m.
Opening: September 4, 7 p.m.
Museum Ludwig
Heinrich-Böll-Platz - 50667 Köln
Hours
Tuesday to Sunday (incl. holidays): 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Every first Thursday of the month: 10:00 a.m.–10:00 p.m.
Closed Mondays
Admission
New fees apply as of January 1, 2014:
Adults: €11.00
Discounted ticket*: €7.50
Families: €22.00
Children & young adults under 18: Free to the permanent collection