50 years Art Cologne: Günter Herzog, director of Zentralarchiv des Internationalen Kunsthandels on the First Kunstmarkt at Gürzenich and Kölnischer Kunstverein, September 13–17, 1967
The genesis of today’s ART COLOGNE, a fair focused on classical modernism, postwar art and contemporary art, was the Kunstmarkt Köln 67. At six in the evening on September 12, 1967, the fair opened in the Gürzenich, the Gothic ceremonial hall of the city of Cologne; it would change the weiterlesen
“I know very well, but nevertheless”. An interview on the occasion of her current show at Bonner Kunstverein (13.11.2015 – 17.01.2016). By Annika Turkowski.
News. Paper. News on paper. Newspaper! What constitutes knowledge, once it is broken down to a single sentence or a mere single word? What happens to a piece of news, once it has been collected, displayed and republished? Is it still legible? How relevant does it remain? In her first weiterlesen
Outside and in the Midst of it All: A portrait by Sabine Elsa Müller
“But spirituality and adornment are no enemies, rather both are to discover their natural unification within the feeble attempt to make life bearable.”
The accompanying text that Kai Althoff used for his first solo show at Michael Werner in 2014, read like a manifesto that culminated in a call for balance between spirituality and decoration.
Just like spirituality, beautiful form, weiterlesen
Speculations on art and its dissolving. An essay by Noemi Smolik
Of late, the concept of speculative materialism/realism has been making the rounds in philosophy and art. In brief, according to proponents of this new form of thought the world can and must be conceived independently of humanity. Kassels’ Fridericianum explored the relevance of these approaches in contemporary art, through the summer of this year holding three events accompanied by a conference and artist weiterlesen
Painting versus Plasma Flatscreen – A Portrait by Harald Uhr.
For a change, why not talk a bit about continuities in the Rhineland? Along with all the perplexity, readjustments or jibes about rural exodus, there are in fact continuities too. Due to their constant ongoing and further development, these continuities naturally do not appear without their breaks or deviations or corrections, and they only come into focus now and then, but somehow much too weiterlesen
A walk across the Expo 1900, or rather a simulation using several illustrations from old books of the Richter Collection.
The Exposition Universelle in 1900 is a dream. It is really, and I’m not lying, it’s truly just pure circumstance that I am now writing for this forum and for kaput magazine about my two favorite expos, just as Expo 2015 is opening in Milan. I had suppressed this, because I hate modern Expos. weiterlesen
Kasimir Malewich and Modernity – A Misunderstanding. An Essay by Noemi Smolik on the occasion of the exhbition at Bundeskunsthalle Bonn
This is the first Malevich exhibition that ventures to show the artist’s link to the Russian tradition by including three icons. And yet, the presentation fails to do justice to Malevich against the backdrop of Russian history. We still continue to project a Western concept of modernism onto the work of this Russian weiterlesen
Back to Abstraction – An essay by Noemi Smolik
Just before the end of the year, Cologne gallerists Alexander Warhus and Luisa Rittershaus presented a striking exhibition of painting in the former spaces of Galerie Zwirner, today the project space WERTHEIM. The 10-day exhibition showed works by young artists living in the Rhineland, who, alongside the visual formats set by the curators, almost all the same size, had one thing in common: abstraction. But weiterlesen
was entitled “bis das Ei hartgekocht ist” (Until the Egg is Hard-Boiled) and took place on September 12, 1963 at Galerie Zwirner at Kolumbakirchhof 2 (by Günter Herzog)
Daniel Spoerri, the artist who provided the works, explained the exhibition in his very rare invitation—so rare that even ZADIK did not receive one—as follows: “Well, when I drove to Cologne around ten days ago in my small van with bad brakes to pick up weiterlesen
Zentralarchiv des Internationalen Kunsthandels on Its Holdings: “Women in my Father’s Life” – Brigitte Jacobs van Renswou on Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen’s First Exhibition at Erhard Klein, 1983
The artist Martin Kippenberger, who died in 1997 at age 44 and was nicknamed KIPPI, is still today considered a provocateur, enfant terrible, bad boy, rebel. This reputation was based above all on his energy-laden, sometimes quite vociferous appearances and productions that were the stuff weiterlesen