Encounters within a Collection
"Blind Date" in Passau
New Acquisitions to the Deutsche Bank Collection at the Museum Moderne Kunst –
Wörlen Foundation Surprising rendezvous, unusual combinations – the
exhibition series Blind Date combines the latest acquisitions for the
Deutsche Bank Collection with highlights that have long since been part of
the largest corporate collection worldwide. After its successful premiere
in Seligenstadt, the show can now be seen at the Museum Moderne Kunst in
Passau.
Takashi Murakami,Smooth Nightmare Drawing, 2000, © 2000
Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved,
Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
Deutsche Bank Collection
With the exhibition
series
Blind Date, recent acquisitions are being presented publicly for the
first time in the history of the
Deutsche Bank Collection in unconventional couplings with some of the
collection’s highlights. The
opening show of the exhibition series in the city of Seligenstadt in
Hessen was already a great success. In the early summer, works of over 80
artists were juxtaposed here for more than six weeks, initiating a
dialogue between generations, art movements, concepts, and styles. The
baroque ensemble of the former Benedictine cloister in a city full of
latticework architecture provided a spectacular backdrop for the show.
Bernhard Martin, Aire de je t'embrasse, 2004,
©Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg/Paris,
Deutsche Bank Collection
After this premiere
drew a record number of visitors, there will now, through December 3,
2006, be another opportunity to see the surprising rendezvous between
artists and works from the collection in a historical setting – this time
in Passau. The Baroque Bavarian city on the Austrian border was chosen to
be the second stopover on the exhibition tour. Dr. Ariane Grigoteit,
Global Head of Deutsche Bank Art, deliberately selected locations far from
the usual art centers to venture a unique experiment in which contemporary
art, historical architecture, and the history of a collection enter into
an unusual symbiosis for a period of time.
Astrid Klein,
On the contrary, it
must prepare itself for a cessation of
experience and return to ordinariness, 2002,
Deutsche Bank Collection,
©Produzentengalerie Hamburg
In Passau,
the show is presented in the Museum
Moderner Kunst – Stiftung Wörlen, which has earned
considerable esteem all around Europe with its exhibitions of the art of
the 20th and 21st centuries. Since 1990, the museum has been housed in a
building from the 16th century that counts among Passau’s most beautiful
landmarks. The picturesque old city on the peninsula where the Danube
meets the Inn provides an ideal ambience for continuing the pioneering
experiment Blind Date.
Ellen Gallagher, from the series "DeLuxe", 2005,
Deutsche Bank Collection,
©Ellen
Gallagher,
Courtesy the artist /
Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
|
In the exhibition, which combines the works of over 50
artists, world concepts and lifestyles collide and affect one another
across temporal and spatial boundaries, asking: How have we lived? How do
we live? How do we want to live? This can particularly be seen in the work
of the young African American artist
Ellen Gallagher as she encounters the Minimalist works of
Eva Hesse. Gallagher’s 60-part series
DeLuxe is installed in glass cases, the images are based on ads from
African American magazines like
Ebony, a successful lifestyle magazine that was developed in 1945
especially for the African American market. Ebony was the first
magazine to portray black models snuggling up to cars, using special hair
products, or sipping soft drinks. Gallagher’s works are characterized by
sly interventions, such as the googly eyes and wigs of silly putty that
she adorns the ads with. Her ornamental visual commentaries question the
past and infiltrate the role models the ads propagate.
Eva Hesse, untitled, 1961,
©The
Estate of Eva Hesse. Hauser & Wirth Zürich London,
Deutsche Bank Collection
If the interplay between
the works and the architecture occasionally brings another dynamics into
the arranged artist pairs, then it’s entirely in the spirit of the
exhibition – because blind dates are encounters that can also turn out to
be somewhat tense. For instance when the cool, almost abstract drawings of
Wilhelm Sasnal encounter
Raymond Pettibon’s works on paper, which quote motifs from comics
and pop culture. Or in the juxtaposition of
Martin Kippenberger’s caricature-like drawings on hotel paper and
Hanne Darboven’s austere grids on graph paper. An artist combination
that brings to fore properties in each that are otherwise frequently
overlooked: a systematic side to Kippenberger and expressive tendencies in
the case of Darboven.
Wilhelm Sasnal, untitled, 2004,
Deutsche Bank Collection,
Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
But humorous
connections can also be discovered. For instance when Blind Date
pairs watercolors by
Claudia and Julia Müller with paper works by
Sigmar Polke. The two sisters "sample" images of
St. Anthony from the paintings of old Dutch masters, while Polke uses
motifs culled from the funny pages of old newspapers. The
interchangeability of cultural signs and the confusion in terms resulting
from this offers the artists plenty of material for their humorous
improvisations.
Claudia und Julia Müller, Zwei heilige Antoniusse
(Marten de Voss und Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere), 2004, © the artists &
Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich
Deutsche Bank Collection
But Blind Date
also makes encounters between artists possible that never could have met
due to their age. Thus, the abstract photographic works of
Markus Amm meet the photograms of
László Moholy-Nagy. Three photographs by the
Bauhaus classic can be seen in Seligenstadt that demonstrate his
preference for unusual image crops. Photographed from a bird’s-eye view,
the dominant diagonals in his city images give rise to abstract
compositions.
Markus Schinwald is, like his "rendezvous"
Oskar Schlemmer, interested in a crossover synthesis of art, dance,
theater, and film. In Schinwald’s 16-part photo work Diarios (to
you), modernist architecture serves as a background for his mysterious
figures. In many of his works, the Austrian plays with masks, costumes,
and precisely choreographed bodily movements – an interest that he shares
with the creator of the
Triadic Ballet.
Markus Schinwald, Diarios (to you), 2003,
Deutsche Bank Collection,
©Markus
Schinwald, Courtesy: Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Wien
Whether it’s
Marlene Dumas meeting
Kara Walker or
Kiki Smith meeting
James Lee Byars, the show’s unusual combinations make for some inspiring
dialogues that the viewer can continue on his or her own. Thus, Blind
Date carries on in the tradition of
25 and
Tokyo Blossoms, the anniversary exhibitions of the Deutsche Bank
Collection. In Berlin and Tokyo, there was a departure from a conventional
chronological or purely art historical presentation, while in Seligenstadt
and Passau, the Deutsche Bank Collection proves to be an organically
growing art network whose individual works are linked by a variety of
references. And just how pioneering this approach really is can be seen in
the exhibition Affinities at the
Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin starting in April 2007. On the occasion of
the 10th anniversary of the exhibition hall at Unter den Linden, the joint
venture between Deutsche Bank and the
Guggenheim Foundation will be celebrated in a unique way. This year’s
new acquisitions to the Deutsche Bank Collection will be juxtaposed with
highlights from the Guggenheim Collection – as a "blind date" arranged by
Thomas Krens, the prominent director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation.
[1]
[2]
[3]
|
