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23/6/2006

General Idea Editions 1967-1995

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Ars viva 05/06 - Identity

From June 25 to August 20, 2006, KW Institute for Contemporary Art presents three exhibitions: General Idea Editions 1967-1995, a show of the ars viva 05/06 - Identity award winners of the Cultural Committee of German Business within the BDI e.V. and Keren Cytter: I was the good and he was the bad and the ugly.

With the exhibition General Idea Editions 1967-1995 from June 24 to August 20, 2006, KW Institute for Contemporary Art presents a retrospective of the Canadian artists' collaborative General Idea and its works. After touring ten cities in Canada and the United States to great acclaim and a successful show in Munich's Kunstverein this spring, the three-hundred-plus works in different media will now be displayed at the KW Institute in Berlin. General Idea Editions 1967-1995 is the trio's largest exhibition in Europe since Fin de sie'cle, which was held at the Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, in 1992. Combining critical theory, political activism and Appropriation Art, General Idea gained international fame and a standing as one of the most influential groups in their field during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, partly because of an AIDS awareness campaign.

The group used conceptual and emotionally expressive approaches in playing confident games with gender, "viral infection" and the parasitic appropriation of popular media. The retrospective gives an encompassing survey of the General Idea oeuvre from 1967 to 1995 in all its diversity, its formats including installation, photography, videos and posters as well as publications, editions and banners - the entire spectrum of multiples. The exhibition also offers visitors access to all editions of FILE Magazine (known as FILE Megazine from 1975), an artists' magazine that reconfigured the format of LIFE Magazine, which led to it being banned for some time. The group's last installation, Fruits de Mer, will also be on show, for only the second time since its inception.

General Idea Editions 1967-1995 was organized by Barbara Fischer for the Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga. The show at KW Institute for Contemporary Art is curated by Markus Muller in close collaboration with Barbara Fischer and AA Bronson (General Idea).

We would like to thank the sponsors of the exhibition: the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Andy Warhol Foundation, Foreign Affairs Canada, the Canadian Embassy in Berlin and Esther Schipper, Berlin.

We are also pleased to announce that, parallel to the exhibition at KW, the Esther Schipper art gallery will be hosting works by General Idea. The show Magi(c) Bullets (1992), Early Works (1968-75) will be running from June 25 to July 29, 2006.

We would also like to draw your attention to a recent interview with AA Bronson published in the summer 2006 issue of Sleek magazine.

ars viva 05/06 - Identity

Jason Dodge, Takehito Koganezawa, Michaela Meise and Robin Rhode

Exhibition of the award winners of the Cultural Committee of German Business within the BDI e.V.

In spring 2005 Jason Dodge, Takehito Koganezawa, Michaela Meise and Robin Rhode were awarded the ars viva 05/06 prize for art, dealing with the question of "Identity". After exhibitions in Rostock and Antwerp, works by the four artists are coming to the KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

During the past few years all four artists have moved their life and work to Berlin; the show in their new hometown will focus on the impact that Berlin and its artistic and social contexts have on the creative process. How are personal experiences mixed up with conditions one comes across in the new environment and what impact does the city's specific historical situation have on the artistic work? The exhibition highlights works addressing issues related to cultural and social background, exploring how to define an identity suspended between the Here and the Elsewhere.

Curated by Katharina Fichtner.

The exhibiton is a project by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and the Cultural Committee of German Business within the BDI e.V.

Keren Cytter: I was the good and he was the bad and the ugly

The writer and artist Keren Cytter is engaged in a project of exploration and experimentation with the way stories are told and scripts are performed. Her fragmented short videos compose episodic narratives of what seem like autobiographical chronicles. Flat realities and bold emotions are fused in romantic and disillusioned stories of daily life. The protagonists of the stories (the artists' friends and relatives) lose themselves in a turbulence of intensities determined by the lyrical scripts. Synchronised social realities are distorted, generating a multitude of possible meanings and readings. Funny, dark, dilettante, raw, sensual, rhythmic and Brechtian are some of the motifs, gestures and textures that colour Cytter's artistic practice. Her work seeks to reveal the real mysteries that we all know to be true in our concrete and embodied, yet hopelessly mediated lives.

Keren Cytter (Tel-Aviv, 1977) just received the Baloise art prize as participant of <> at the international art fair Art 37 Basel. Recent solo presentations of her work were held at Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo (2006), Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich (2005), Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (2005), Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam (2004). Keren Cytter is the author of the novels The Sunset of Yesterday (Shadurian, Tel Aviv, 2003) and The Man Who Climbed Up the Stairs of Life and Found Out They Were Cinema Seats (Lukas & Sternberg, New York and Berlin, 2005). Keren Cytter's first feature film, CARS, will be launched in winter 2007 in the Netherlands.

Curated by Hila Peleg.

The book I was the good and he was the bad and the ugly includes texts by Keren Cytter, Hila Peleg and Avi Pitchon and will be published by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and Revolver Verlag, Frankfurt in August 2006.

The project is realized with financial support from the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam.

Image: General Idea "Nazi Milk" (1979). Offset on paper. Photo: Peter MacCallum

Opening: Saturday June 24, 2006, 5 - 10 pm

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststrabe 69 - Berlin

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