12 October – 21 December 2002

TACITA DEAN

tacita_2_1
An unspectacular fascination emanates from some stories, places and times, a kind of magical charge, which exists only for a moment or perhaps even for years. With an incisive yet endearing eye, Tacita Dean discovers the unusual and renders it visible through films and photographs she has taken or composed herself or indeed from found images. She has made an almost forgotten space—the windowless cellar studio of Marcel Broodthaers where he set up the Section Cinéma of his famous imaginary museum 30 years previously—the setting of a film for the exhibition.
Images as well as their meanings and conditions play a central part in Tacita Dean’s work as they did in that of Marcel Broodthaers. The engagement with cinema and the museum per se, with collecting, the image, naming, word and meaning form the fundament of the exhibition, which she has conceived for the Kunstverein. The power of time, the cyclical as a phenomenon and also that of disappearance, as well as the possibility of making things visible are all illuminated in Deans filmic images.

We should like to thank WestLB for generously supporting the exhibition. We are also grateful to the Rheinische Post and the British Council.
   

7 July – 22 September 2002

RICHARD WRIGHT

treppedetail
Richard Wright  has created a multipart wall piece for the exhibition in the Kunstverein based upon the elongated form of the space, the lighting conditions and the movement of the viewer within the space. Wright’s works aren’t immediately visible. Characterised by timelessness, this spatial work can only be accessed by a slowly-moving, meditative eye and not one overwhelmed by information. At first one gets the impression that the artwork has nothing to do with the surrounding world. However, upon closer inspection, a multitude of connections to the immediate environs emerges—both to the architecture and the history of the place. References on the central stairway and the concrete module but also Joseph Beuys’ »Ofenrohr« (chimney) fuse with references to ornaments on porcelain, album covers, clothing, drawings of telephones and utility graphics, as well as tendencies within 20th Century abstract painting.  Renouncing the immediately recognisable, Wright challenges the viewer for his part to look and questions the interpretabilty of the image.
   

September 2001 - February 2002

EINGANG LINKS / ENTER TO THE LEFT

Art and Music Projects in the Construction Site

evefuture
During the refurbishment of the Kunstverein and the Kunsthalle, which is due to continue until May 2002, the Kunstverein will make use of the special situation brought about by the construction site with a series of art and music events. From September 2001 until February 2002, EINGANG LINKS offers artists, musicians and mediators a platform for collaborations on respective Saturday evenings. Significant interrelationships between art and music in contemporary life will be investigated in a series of performances, musical contributions, video presentations and talks.

The Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen was awarded the Jürgen Ponto Foundation »Young Art in the Kunstvereinen« prize in 2001. The prize money was directed towards the financing of the EINGANG LINKS series of events.