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Lawrence Weiner
NACH ALLES / AFTER ALL
July 15 until October 08, 2000
From July 15 until October 8, 2000 the Deutsche Guggenheim presents LAWRENCE WEINER: NACH ALLES / AFTER ALL, a new, specially commissioned installation for its gallery on Unter den Linden. A pioneer of Conceptual Art, Lawrence Weiner is a sculptor whose medium is language. Since 1968, when he concluded that the actual construction of a work was not critical to its existence in the world, Weiner has created hundreds of artworks using language as the constant in an array of possible other materials. His explication for this, first published in 1968 and still relevant today, evinces how Weiner revolutionized the very definition of what constitutes an artwork: "(1) The artist may construct the piece. (2) The piece may be fabricated. (3) The piece need not be built. Each being equal and consistent with the intent of artist, the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership." In a radical restructuring of the traditional artist/viewer relationship, Weiner shifted the responsibility of the work's realization to its audience, while also expanding upon systems of artistic distribution. A work can be physically realized or merely spelled out on a museum wall, but it can also be read in a book or heard if uttered aloud. Weiner's art can literally be disseminated by word of mouth.
While not site-specific, Weiner's text pieces physically correspond to the locations in which they are exhibited. Thus, his work is conceived new for each location, with special regard for it. Art and architecture are thereby seamlessly connected. For his Deutsche Guggenheim commission entitled NACH ALLES / AFTER ALL, Weiner has created a bilingual installation, in which the written word traverses the gallery walls, articulating the space with associative phrases. The project is also manifest in the special book that Weiner designed on the occasion of the commission in which text and drawings intersect to offer a multilayered dialogue between the verbal and the visual.
NACH ALLES / AFTER ALL is composed of texts that address the multiple realities of things and their materials as they coexist and interact in the same space. In the installation, for example, two separate entities-"a clear thing" and "a dense thing"-"reflect the same light," a point that underscores their difference, but also their inherent similarity. NACH ALLES / AFTER ALL follows from Weiner's interest in the work of Berlin-born, scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), whose exhaustive systems of classification inspired the artist to re-examine the mundane materials of his surroundings and the ways in which they are ordered. The title of the commissioned project-NACH ALLES/AFTER ALL-is intended to connote the total accumulation of things with a reference to what might lie beyond (or after) such an aggregation of materials. It does not necessarily refer to the idiomatic phrase "after all is said and done," which indicates a finality. In German the more common spelling of this phrase would be "Nach Allem," but Weiner has chosen to use the slightly irregular "Nach Alles" in order to subtly emphasize this nuance in meaning and to invoke the potential for wonder available to those who open their minds to the array of things present at any given time in any given space.
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Weiner's relationship with Berlin and Germany has been particularly long and significant. Gallery exhibitions in Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Munich in the early 1970s, a grant from the Berlin artists' program run by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in 1975, as well as his participation in documenta in Kassel in 1972 and 1982 were early milestones in Weiner's career as an artist.
The exhibition is curated by Lisa Dennison, Chief Curator and Deputy Director, and Nancy Spector, Curator of Contemporary Art, at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, with Joan Young, Assistant Curator. Close collaboration with the artists in designing catalogs, editions and other materials to accompany exhibitions is axiomatic for Deutsche Guggenheim. For his commission, Weiner considers these activities part and parcel of the work itself. These ideal conditions have led to a limited edition suitable for adventurers and a book by the artist. The bilingual publication features detailed documentation of the commissioned work through drawings, texts and plans and is on sale for DM 59.
The Deutsche Guggenheim Edition No. 12 is a set of optical instruments designed by Lawrence Weiner for explorers. The spyglass and magnifying glass in a luminous orange travel case can be used to survey the immediate and more distant surroundings in order to experience them in a new light. The set of optical precision instruments in anodized aluminum was produced exclusively for the edition in collaboration with the training workshop of Carl Zeiss, Germany. Edition No. 12 is limited to 50 hand-numbered and signed sets available from the museum shop for a price of DM 2,700.
In cooperation with Literature Express Europe 2000, twenty-four authors will be outlining their image of Europe at a non-stop reading performance in the installation by Lawrence Weiner from noon to 4.00 p.m. on Sunday, July 16, 2000. The event is being held in collaboration with literaturWERKstatt berlin and artefakt.
On September 8, an opera entitled The Society Architect Ponders the Golden Gate Bridge, or How They Get What They Don't Deserve by Lawrence Weiner (libretto, design) and Peter Gordon (music) will premiere in the historic hall of Hamburger Bahnhof. Additional performances of the opera project, organized by the Freunde Guter Musik e.V. together with the Hebbel Theater, will follow on September 9 and 10.
Scholar Dr. Birgit Pelzer, Ecole supérieure des arts plastiques Saint-Luc, Brussels, will deliver a lecture headed Linguistic objects: the Statements/Sculptures of Lawrence Weiner at 7.00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 20, 2000. The special exhibition programming will round off with a family brunch at Deutsche Guggenheim at 11.30 a.m. on September 24, 2000.
Deutsche Guggenheim is a partner of .Kunstherbst Berlin
Press Preview: Freitag, 14. July 14, 2000, 11 a.m.
Images of the exhibition
are available online at www.photo-files.de/guggenheim in a 300 dpi quality.
Further information at
Manager: Svenja Gräfin von Reichenbach
Press: Sara Bernshausen
Phone: +49-30-202093-14
Fax: +49-30-202093-20
email: berlin.guggenheim@db.com
Internet: www.deutsche-guggenheim.de
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