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25/3/2011

Four exhibitions

Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf

Mack - the language of my hand

Heinz Mack became famous as an artist and co-founder of the internationally influential artist group ZERO primarily through his light reliefs and light installations. Less known is his extensive graphic oeuvre on which he himself comments, ‘For me, graphic art is a language without words, a perfect poetic language with its own syntax, intonation and rhythm. Pure visual poetry, as it contains no rational meaning.’ The medium of drawing grants the artist a high degree of spontaneity; at the same time the artist appreciates the inner logic and discipline which become apparent in a good drawing. This is also why Mack described his works on paper as the ‘grammar’ of his art: ‘I believe that the lines condense into an energy filed, a structure in which all parts, all elements are indissolubly connected with each other and set in vibration or motion when we contemplate them with sensibility, calmness and open-minded interest.’

Focusing on the graphic oeuvre museum kunst illuminates a rarely shown, as yet largely unpublished facet of this versatile artist. The exhibition includes a concentrated selection of pencil, quill, ink drawings and pastels.

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26.03.2011 - 07.08.2011

Johan Thorn Prikker
Art by all means – from Art Nouveau to Abstraction

Curators: Christiane Heiser and Barbara Til

Working together with the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, over 130 works are presented by museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf, from the multi-faceted oeuvre of Johan Thorn Prikker (The Hague 1868 to 1932 Cologne). The exhibition of this Dutch artist, who mainly became famous through his Art Nouveau works, is the first retrospective of his oeuvre in over 30 years, comprising all the genres in which this versatile artist was active: paintings, drawings, watercolours, mosaics, murals, glass windows, furniture, design objects, textile art, book covers and carpets.


As well as numerous items from international collections, visitors to museum kunst palast in Düsseldorf will find that the foyer of the collection wing also has a large format window by Thorn Prikker which has been part of the building since 1925. In the same year Thorn Prikker also created two monumental mosaic walls for the corner pavilions of the Ehrenhof.
Johan Thorn Prikker studied painting at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, and even his early paintings and drawing are counted among the most outstanding works of Dutch Symbolism. However, Thorn Prikker gained considerably more fame with his works in applied art, ranging from lead glass through furniture, textile art and carpets to monumental mosaics and murals.

In the 1890s the emphasis of his art began to shift towards social critique. “The artist’s successful use of material in his monumental works – with their references to the structures and colours of architecture, both formally and in content – shows that Thorn Prikker continued to develop his ideal synthesis of the arts for the benefit of the people, despite his change of techniques and media.”(Christiane Heiser)
In 1904, after his first successes as an artist, he left the Netherlands to teach at the School of Applied Art and Craft, in Krefeld. Following an invitation by Karl Ernst Osthaus, he then moved to Hagen, where he also designed a monumental window for the town’s central railway station, with the programmatic title: “The Artist as a Teacher for Trade and Commerce”.
It was not only through his wide-ranging artistic work in the Netherlands and Germany that Thorn Prikker made an immense impact on monumental art in Germany, but especially also through his murals, mosaics and windows and also through his teaching activities at various schools of applied art and craft in Krefeld, Munich, Essen, Düsseldorf and Cologne.

Glass windows and mosaics at the Ehrenhof in Düsseldorf Thorn Prikker’s most significant legacy in Düsseldorf consists of three works. Firstly, there are two monumental mosaic walls, executed by Otto Wiegmann in 1925, called “Day” and “Night”. Both can be viewed at today’s Ehrenhof, where they occupy the northern corner pavilion of the NRW Forum and the southern corner pavilion of museum kunst palast. Secondly there is also a tall, large-format glass window in the foyer of the collection wing, facing the river Rhine. This window comprises 35 panes and adds a cathedral-like character to the room with its high ceiling. The window was inserted in its current location in 1926 on the occasion of a major exhibition entitled GeSoLei (a German acronym for healthcare, social welfare and physical exercise). The overall artistic management of the GeSoLei project was handled by Wilhelm Kreis who, in his role as architect and town planner, was responsible for the conceptual and artistic design of the four building sections which were to be preserved after the end of the exhibition. After GeSoLei the building was occupied by the Kunstmuseum (Museum of Art, now museum kunst palast) and by the Reichsmuseum für Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftskunde (Imperial Museum for Social and Economic Sciences, now NRW Forum). The original Planetarium was transformed into a large function room (now Tonhalle), and only the restaurant (now Rheinterrassen) retained its original purpose.

In 1937 the window in the foyer of today’s museum kunst palast was classified by the Nazis as “degenerate art” and was partly removed. The remaining windows were destroyed in an air raid in 1943. After their replacement with plain white glass in the 1950s, they were restored to their original state during the rebuilding of the Kunstmuseum in 1984, using the cardboard patterns that had been preserved at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld.
The climax of Prikker’s attention to the forms and motifs of ornamental monumental art came partly with this glass window and partly with his two mosaic walls, “Day” and “Night”, in the corner pavilions of the Ehrenhof. “His anti-naturalist, expressive design and his tendency towards ornamental and abstract-geometric elements combines an architectural approach with the autonomous imagery of two-dimensional art. What makes his mosaics, in particular, so convincing is not just this “cleansed” imagery, but also the way he composed his art with the material – and not for the material.” (Barbara Til)

The curators of the Düsseldorf exhibition are the art historian Christiane Heiser, who is also an expert on Thorn Prikker, and Barbara Til, head of the Collection Department for Sculptures and Applied Art at museum kunst palast.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a range of workshops and talks as well as a Symposium on 8 April 2011.

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26.03.2011 - 07.08.2011
New colours
A selection from the Kemp collection

The Kemp collection is one of the largest collections in Germany with a focus on the styles of Art Informel and colour field painting. The presentation of a selection of the most important works from this style coincides with the bestowal of this significant private collection upon museum kunst palast.

The collection is founded on the work of the painter Carl Buchheister, a pioneer of Abstraction in Germany and close companion to the Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. The formal diversity of Buchheister’s work finds its match in the wealth of works such as those by Kenneth Noland, Cy Twombly or Richard Tuttle, through to Gerhard Hoehme and Karl Otto Götz.

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SPOT ON 06
The title SPOT ON refers to a museum kunst palast exhibition series for which several project rooms are set up anew at six-month intervals. In line with the museum’s liveliness and openness the SPOT ON programme goes beyond being restricted to most recent art or individual genres, with the rooms accommodating presentations of selected work groups from the museum’s own collection.
The project rooms also introduce and facilitate discussion of important new acquisitions, as well as featuring smaller exhibitions of artists who live in Düsseldorf or have a particular connection with the city.

Monika Bartholomé. Netsuke and other stories.
Monika Bartholomé engages with Japanese Nesuke figures by means of drawings and film clips. Starting point of this project was the artist’s fascination with the Nesuke collection held by museum kunst palast. These miniature carvings from the 18th and 19th century, which were used on kimono belts to fix sacks or small bags (sagemono), are characterised by a wealth and diversity of motifs. Using economical pencil lines, Monika Bartholomé builds upon the three-dimensional object and develops an ambiguous-intuitive process, which calls into being an intense network of relations between the drawn figures, the actual Netsuke and the viewer.

Arnulf Rainer
The Austrian artist Arnulf Rainer is represented in the collection with six works. On the occasion of the acquisition of a further work as well as two works from the Kemp collection, this body of works will be given a new presentation. Rainer’s oeuvre is among the most radical positions of painting in our time; with his technique of re-painting, the artist has time and again explored the boundaries of the medium. The work group of the museum kunst palast collection comprises the artist’s most important creative periods since the 1950s.

Clemens Weiss
Using glued together recycled window glass, Clemens Weiss creates curious ‘homes’ for this drawings and records. In contrast to ordinary cases, these sculptures have no opening – they must be destroyed in order to reach the content. The transparent glass grants an insight and yet refuses access. The accessibility of art – both in the physical and figurative sense – is being addressed here and inspires new perspectives on contemporary art.
Clemens Weiss (born in Krefeld in 1955) lives in New York City and Mönchengladbach. His works touch upon three of the museum’s focal areas: The Hentrich Glass Museum, in whose exhibition hall the show will be staged, the Collection of Prints and Drawings and, of course, the Department of Modern Art.

Image: Heinz Mack, o.T., 2010. Tusche auf Papier © VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2011

Press contact:
Marina Schuster Tel +49(0)211-8996211 Fax +49(0)211-8929504 marina.schuster@smkp.de
Christina Bolius Tel +49(0)211-8996250 Fax +49(0)211-8929504 christina.bolius@smkp.de

Stiftung Museum Kunst Palast
Ehrenhof 4-5 40479 Düsseldorf
Hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 11 am – 6 pm, Thursday 11 am – 9 pm

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