Reflexion und Einfühlung
Natalie Czech, Alexandra Hopf, Nashashibi/Skaer, Olivia Plender, Laure Prouvost, Lucy Skaer, Jens Ullrich
January 21 to March 31, 2012
Curator: Julia Höner
Since the beginning of the twentieth century artists have been using their art to examine the conditions under which art is produced and perceived. For even longer they have been making use of the wealth of styles and motifs in art history. Art and its context form an inexhaustible pool of material, fertile ground upon which the new flourishes.
The exhibition Reflexion und Einfühlung (Reflection and Empathy) presents the work of seven artists who move with the elegance of flaneurs through the recesses of the system, examining the conditions under which art is made. In their works Natalie Czech, Alexandra Hopf, Nashashibi/Skaer, Olivia Plender, Laure Prouvost, Lucy Skaer and Jens Ullrich look at who produces art, under which conditions it is presented, who participates in semanticizing it, and what kind of aesthetic tools artists have today to invent their own forms. For artists, the process of grounding their goals and tasks in art and its immediate context could be described as reflective and empathic, yet, their entanglement with the promises and pitfalls of making art cannot be called hermetic. Their works could be regarded as a response to a time that is dominated as never before by the simultaneity of inequalities in art, politics, and life. This situation does not permit any objectifying statements about the world as a system of references, or about art itself and the conditions under which it is presented. Instead, the artists in this exhibition convey their subjective perspective of things. The reflection of reality is replaced by the “reality of reflection,” in which the relationships of the pictures to each other and their link to the subject of thought play a role. Artist’s vitae, institutional concepts, and existing works are regarded as unfinished processes that refer to each other and to contemporary art, forming a foundation for a mode of thinking within the infinite space of possibilities.
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Further supported by:
Exhibition views
Accompanying program
, 7 pm
All the mistakes I`ve made. An Anti-Artist-Talk
by Daniel Cockburn (in English)
“I will discuss my film/video work in terms of the aesthetic and ideological missteps I have made. It will perhaps be shown that my regrets constitute a parallel body of work.” (Daniel Cockburn)
Canadian artist Daniel Cockburn scrutinizes the popular medium of the artist talk in a critical, yet humorous way.
In cooperation with the Embassy of Canada
, 7 pm
Desiring Pictures
A discussion of the exhibition with artists Natalie Czech and Jens Ullrich, as well as Oliver Tepel (author, curator) and Julia Höner (curator of the exhibition)
, 7 pm
Artists, the better Art Critics?
An overiew by Noemi Smolik (Art Critic)