calendario eventi  :: 




20/10/2011

Two exhibitions

ZKM_Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe

By way of a selection of characteristic works, the exhibition "The Hirsch-Index. The Art of Quotation" investigates the ways in which artistic creativity and strategies of artists have evolved over the foregoing decades. The question as to models of style, form and motif is shifted to the foreground. The exhibition series "Sensor. Time for Young Approaches" shows works at short intervals by young artists from collections cooperating with the ZKM; now with a solo exhibition by Alicja Kwade. In her sculptures Kwade takes up art historical traditions, theories of natural sciences and sociological questions.


comunicato stampa

The Hirsch-Index
The Art of Quotation

Participating artists:
Rodolfo Aricò, Gabriele Arruzzo, Paolo Baratella, Bruno di Bello, Gianni Bertini, Corrado Bonomi, Rafal Bujnowski, Ross Chisholm, Clegg & Guttmann, Enrico David, Dejanov / Heger, Sven Drühl, Chiara Dynys, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Tano Festa, Sylvie Fleury, Francesco Maria Garbelli, Karl Gerstner, Asta Gröting, Uwe Henneken, Georg Herold, Stephan Huber, Emilio Isgro, Stefan Kern, Imi Knoebel, Alicja Kwade, Sherrie Levine, Michel Majerus, Allan McCollum, Mathieu Mercier, Gerold Miller, François Morellet, Maurizio Nannucci, Manuel Ocampo, Andy Ouchi, Giulio Paolini, Daniel Pflumm, Bernhard Prinz, Tobias Rehberger, Hans Peter Reuter, Salvo, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jörg Sasse, Rob Scholte, Elaine Sturtevant, Vincent Szarek, Emilio Tadini, Rosemarie Trockel, Danh Vo, Andy Warhol, Christopher Williams, Johannes Wohnseifer, Joseph Zehrer, Peter Zimmermann, Heimo Zobernig, Beat Zoderer.

Curator Andreas F. Beitin

All cultural production, whether in art, literature, music or philosophy emerges from within the context of a tradition – even if they finally break with it. In their art, artists make reference to their own works, but far more to that of other artists. The art of last century was frequently oriented towards the worldly connoisseur who would have recognized the artistic references contained in a work. Thanks to his education, he would have grasped the significance of the quotations employed, and thereby have his own knowledge confirmed in the work. During the 20th century, the canon of “quotable” models was extended favoring a multiplicity of model quotes drawn from the full spectrum of the human life world. The quote may be seen as the most important form of appropriation in the artistic creative process.

By way of a selection of characteristic works, the exhibition The Hirsch–Index. "The Art of Quotation" investigates the ways in which artistic creativity and strategies of artists have evolved over the foregoing decades. The question as to models of style, form and motif is shifted to the foreground. As part of the discourse on the claim to originality of works of art and the role of the author, numerous exhibitions took place during the 1970s that dealt with such topics as the original, the after-image, the quote and the copy. In view of a flood of images and the simultaneous intensification of the use of quotation in contemporary art, a new look into this theme seems essential and reasonable.

"A picture is a tapestry of quotations from countless corners of culture."
(Sherrie Levine)

Here, the concept of the Hirsch-Index in the title of the exhibition derives from science and research: Named after American physicist, Jorge Hirsch, the index is calculated from the intersection of the total number of a scholar's publications and the sum of the quotes from them. The Hirsch-Index thus reproduces the scholar's "value".

However, in contrast to this method of scientific ranking, the aim of the exhibition is not concerned with investigating how often, for example, Kasimir Malevich's Black Square has been cited in art. The focus of the presentation is far more a presentation of the different modes of artistic appropriation of styles: forms of motifs, the use of materials, of models drawn from popular culture, from the world of commodities, from politics, etc.

Here, the quote as a strategic device is to be understood as part of a critical examination in the historical reception of certain, often stylistically influential situations. What happens to earlier artistic, social or political ideas and objectives which connoted or still connote the work of art? The one of the other icon of modernity runs through several media until finally returning, once again, to the art context both in and with a new work. Here, irony and humor often accompany artists' new, discursive orientations.

The exhibition is organized according to the sources of the quotations drawn from art, design, politics, religion, advertising and consumption, whereby, true to the nature of modern art, there are overlaps. So as to evade one-dimensional readings, the organizers have refrained from designating the various aspects comprising the exhibition. With The Hirsch–Index. "The Art of Quotation", the visitor is given the opportunity to make new discoveries as well as to revisit familiar works among a fascinating spectrum of pictorial findings.

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October 22nd, 2011 - January 8th, 2012

Sensor. Time for Young Approaches
01_Alicja Kwade

The exhibition series Sensor. Time for Young Approaches shows works at short intervals by young artists from collections cooperating with the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art – either as single presentations or in dialog. The exhibition is to be opened with a solo exhibition by Alicja Kwade from the Christian Boros Collection.

In her sculptures, installations and photographs, the sculptress Alicja Kwade (born in Katowice, in 1979) takes up art historical traditions, theories of natural sciences and sociological questions in an entirely fascinating way. Consequently she touches both contemporary cul-tural as well as political and economic themes.
Kwade changes and manipulates the physical properties of materials, thereby evoking the surprise effects which disconcert the value we place on experience, our attitudes and our viewing habits.

The transformation of the simplest everyday objects by way of an elaborate procedure into apparently luxurious artifacts shows our understanding of materials, objects and ideas.

Our ascriptions and perceptions, frequently irrational, are based on cultural patterns, conventions and codes which Kwade undertakes to question with her 'counteractions'. "What interests me are those things and phenomena about which one is not in a position to comprehend [...] these concern the abstract, the absurd, the inexplicable and the not-experienceable, but the nevertheless constantly present [...]". (Alicja Kwade)
With the materials she uses, the found pieces and design objects, she also draws on the wealth of forms and ideas of art history: she touches the cosmos of a Marcel Duchamp with his idea of the Readymade. Merging objects and the cancellation of physical attributes are reminiscent of Salvador Dalí and René Magritte. But when viewing Alicja Kwade's clear and minimalist sculptures one may also observe an affinity to Donald Judd and Robert Morris. For this process-oriented further development, Kwade counteracts the aspects of the museal and of conservation, here addressing a fundamental question in the contemporary art world and institutions.

Just as Kwade characterizes all art-historical references as derived more from the unconscious, neither does she wish her work to be reduced to an exclusively natural scientific or philosophic approach. It is rather that she draws on these as building blocks so as to exam-ine the identity of things and their relative significance.

For this "Kohle (Rekord)" (2006) offers a wonderfully complex example: Kwade takes normal commercial coal and produces a bronze mold from it, covers the single briquettes with gold leaf and positions these 'gold bar' blocks on a base. In this case, too, it is the distorted mate-rial codex which points to the immanent values – both on a monetary as well as ideal level. To this are added the (value) transformations that go along with the artistic creative proc-esses, frequently through the incomprehensible attribution of economic values.


Image:

Andy Warhol, Goethe, 1981. Acryl auf Leinwand, 205 x 225 cm Sammlung Siegfried Weishaupt © Artists Rights Society, New York
Foto: Archiv Sammlung Siegfried Weishaupt, Laupheim

Sylvie Fleury, Kelly Bag, 1998 Bronze, Holz, Kunstfell, 27 x 18 x 18 cm FER COLLECTION © Sylvie Fleury
Foto: Archiv FER COLLECTION

Press contact:
Dominika Szope Phone ++49(0)721-8100-1220 presse@zkm.de
Museums communication:
Janine Burger Phone ++49(0)721-8100-1993 burger@zkm.de

Opening: Fri, Oct. 21st, 2011, 7 p.m.

ZKM Museum fur Neue Kunst
Lorenzstraße 19 76135, Karlsruhe, Germany
Hours: Mon, Tue closed | Wed - Fri 10am-6pm, Sat - Sun 11am-6pm

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