Exhibition from November 22 until February 1 2015
Opening Friday 21.11.2014 / 7 p.m.

›Fremd bin ich Eingezogen‹

Ole Aselmann, Guy Ben-Ner, Lukas Birk, Com&Com, EVA & ADELE, Alexandros Georgiou, Jürgen Krause, Minus Delta t, Antje Schiffers, HA Schult
Prologue: Boris Dornbusch

The exhibition, “Fremd bin ich eingezogen” takes a look at a specific habitus of the artist, that of a travelling existence. It thematizes conditions, strategies and specific working methods of travelling artists.
Journeying on foot, by car, by boat, by bicycle or by plane – what is otherwise a means to an end and, for artists in an international culture business, a long-established part of life and work, is for the artists on show here an end in itself and the content of their artistic creativity. Beyond a situation-dependent studio, other working conditions apply that influence the oeuvre in a specific way. Both the role of the artist and the importance of social and cultural networks are placed at the focus at the same time. In addition, outside of the artist’s own cultural and linguistic space, questions of the constitutive elements of one’s own identity gain in relevance. Regardless of whether the nomadic artist took off as a flâneur or on self-assigned research, whether he collects or exchanges – he surveys the peculiar or disconcerting, steps through geographic and mental spaces, exceeds their boundaries and thus becomes a seismographer and mediator of global cultural understanding, bringing people and traditions of different origin into contact with one another.
The exhibition, “Fremd bin ich eingezogen” unites eleven artistic positions: current productions and also “historical” works from the 1970s and 1980s. The starting point is HA Schult's “Aktion 20,000 Kilometer”, which stopped off at the Heidelberger Kunstverein on 3 November 1970. HA Schult, before the eyes of an indignant public, questioned not only the traditional concept of art, but staged compressed life as strain and state of being exposed within the art business. The Swiss/Austrian artists’ collective Minus Delta t also ranged between the poles of institutional criticism and global cultural exchange at the beginning of the 1980s with the heavy haulage of a boulder from Europe to Asia. The artist duo Com&Com is currently using an enormous tree trunk as a catalyst; its journey across all continents is updating the historical questions as to the meaningfulness of boundary lines between art and popular culture, local tradition and global uprooting. In this context travelling functions as an open system of latent questioning and of unexpected answers.
In the exhibition, further focuses are placed on narration as a means of orientation in the unknown and as an important cultural practice during the journey. This is symbolized by the works by Alexandros Georgiou, Lukas Birk and Ole Aselmann. Their chosen media are travel diaries, postcards and an audio item. Jürgen Krause and Guy Ben-Ner use a millimetre-accurate geographic map and a live performance video filmed at various locations to develop specific recording formats in which the superimposition of space and activity is thematized. With the costume plans and Polaroids by EVA & ADELE travel documents are shown that abolish individual history and describe identity as an artwork that is equally art and life. Antje Schiffers, finally, questions the role of the artist outside of the known structures of art and culture industry. She exchanges her artworks and her working time for commodities from other work processes.

The exhibition’s romantic prologue is formed by the audio installation by Boris Dornbusch, which the artist has created specially for the foyer of the Heidelberger Kunstverein. With his work he sends the participants off on a dream journey – from this non-place to the possible place of longing. Sensitized in a poetic manner, one is able to sound out the connection between the architecture of the building and the landscape in the former’s immediate surroundings. As a result of the minimal intervention the Foyer becomes a permeable membrane for daydreams & longings, an important incitement for setting off on a journey.

Foyer

›Jahresgaben 2014 ‹

Lukas Birk & Sean Foley, Com&Com, Seiichi Furuya, Antje Majewski, Bertold Mathes, Patrick Rieve und Antje Schiffers

To mark the new year the annual editions to the Kunstverein are presented in the Foyer. On show are works by Lukas Birk and Sean Foley, Com&Com, Seiichi Furuya, Antje Majewski, Bertold Mathes, Patrick Rieve and Antje Schiffers. They have emerged mainly from the context of the most recent exhibitions and, in synopsis, show the diversity of contents and means that make up the exhibiting artists’ artistic practice. The Foyer thereby offers an insight into the spectrum of what was recently on show at the Kunstverein.
Through the acquisition of an annual donation you not only bring delight to yourself or your gift’s recipient, you also and in equal parts support the Kunstverein and the artist. In times of modest public Fine Art subsidies, through the acquisition of selected unique pieces and multiples you make an individual contribution to the furthering of artistic activity and cultural diversity – at an attractive price, too.

EVA & ADELE: Cum Polaroid, P6, Brandenburg 1993

Com&Com (Marcus Gossolt/Johannes M. Hedinger): Bloch Urnäsch Auktion (2011)

Lukas Birk, Matchstick writing, 2012

Exhibition from November 22 until February 1 2015 Opening Friday 21.11.2014 / 7 p.m.

›Fremd bin ich Eingezogen‹

›Jahresgaben 2014 ‹

Exhibition from November 22 until February 1 2015
Opening Friday 21.11.2014 / 7 p.m.