Bethan Huws
Étant donnés
2008
fibreglass and Bec Auer lamp
Courtesy the artist & Galerie Tschudi, Glarus-Zuoz
photo: Raymond Meier, New York
© the artist and VG-Bildkunst Bonn
Aaron Curry
Ohnedaruth
2009
Steel
252 x 108 x 122 cm
© Aaron Curry
Private Collection
Alicia Kwade
Parallelwelt 1
2008
metall
© the artist
Olaf Nicolai
Samani. (Some Proposals to Answer Important Questions)
2008
Mixed Media
© the artist
Courtesy Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig/Berlin
bethan huws
march 5 to may 24, 2010
Bethan Huws (* 1961 in Bangor, Wales) has been described as a conceptual artist on the basis of her text-based works and the apparent predominance of ideas over their visual aspect. This also seems plausible in view of her involvement with the oeuvre of Marcel Duchamp, the father of Conceptual Art. The strategy of appropriating Duchamp's works which is pursued in Huws's films, word vitrines, wall paintings and objects constitutes a particular manifestation of Appropriation Art which the exhibition in the kestnergesellschaft intends to investigate. The focus is accordingly on numerous works of various genres which make diverse references to Duchamp, who was presented in 1965 at the kestnergesellschaft. The artist represented Wales in 2003 at the Venice Biennale. Her works are displayed at the Tate Modern et al.
aaron curry
march 5 to may 24, 2010
The sculptures, paintings and drawings by the young American artist Aaron Curry (* 1972 in San Antonio, Texas) activate the viewer, who remains caught up in seemingly familiar details: a form which shows a vague similarity to a knee or a shoulder, a leg-bone, an arm or a skull. As soon as the perspective is shifted, the echoes of human anatomy turn into abstract forms. This interplay between abstraction and figuration runs through his entire oeuvre, just as does the combination of traditional, culturally exalted genres such as sculpture with pop-cultural forms of expression such as graffiti. For the first time in Germany, works by the artist are being presented in cooperation with the Museum GAMeC, Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bergamo.
alicja kwade
april 9 to may 24, 2010
For the first institutional solo exhibition of Alicja Kwades (* 1979 in Kattowitz, Poland), which is being realized in collaboration with the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster, the former resident of Hannover is planning a series of new works. The artist plays most often with the productive tension between her works' surface texture, which recalls Minimal Art, and the everyday aspect of their original utilization. Kwade makes deliberate use here of the medium of installation and integrates found objects and everyday items therein. Thus mirrors and desk lamps are electroplated, metallized or enameled in elaborate procedures. Everyday objects are thereby transformed into artifacts which cannot deny their original functions but can no longer fulfill them.
olaf nicolai
june 11 to august 22, 2010
With Olaf Nicolai (* 1962 in Halle) the kestnergesellschaft is presenting one of the most successful German artists of the last twenty years. In his works, he creates artificial landscape spaces, shifts the dimension of objects of consumption onto a gigantic scale, and thereby plays with the desires of our adventure-hungry society. Proceeding from a deep interest in the processes of the natural sciences and the humanities, the artist and specialist in German studies with a doctoral degree works to represent them in the aesthetic field of contemporary art. Olaf Nicolai was present at the Documenta X (1997) and at the 49th and 51st Biennales in Venice during 2001 and 2005. Two extensive spatial installations will be realized in the kestnergesellschaft.
larry sultan
june 11 to august 22, 2010
With work series such as The Valley, in which he investigated the film locations of the Californian porno industry, the American photographer Larry Sultan (* 1946 in New York) has become one of the most important protagonists of conceptual photography. Sultan is interested in the life of the American middle-class and its deceptive gracefulness. In his new series Homeland, the actors are illegal Mexican immigrants who, for example, offer their services in front of a shopping center outside the city. At the same time the artist, who grew up in California, investigates the idyllic, remembered landscapes of his childhood. The staged interplay of opposites blurs the borders between fiction and reality. For the first time in an institutional solo exhibition in Germany, the kestnergesellschaft is presenting fundamental sections of Sultan's overall oeuvre.
cecily brown
september 3 to november 7, 2010
Cecily Brown (*1969 in London) is considered to be a shooting star of expressive painting. The artist, who lives in New York, translates her motifs – often landscapes or erotic images of human bodies entwined in each other – into large-format, energetic color-compositions. Concrete outlines of bodies or objects are only vaguely indicated and dissolve into colored, highly expressive surfaces. Brown's atmospherically dense pictures continue the tradition of such painters as Nicolas Poussin, Edouard Manet, William Hogarth or Willem de Kooning. In the spaces of the kestnergesellschaft, her presentation will include a new cycle of works. In 2009, Cecily Brown had a solo exhibition at the Hamburger Deichtorhallen and is represented in the collections of important museums such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London.
nathalie djurberg
september 3 to november 7, 2010
The animated films of Nathalie Djurberg (* 1978 in Lysekil, Sweden) open for the viewer a vista onto both beautiful and disturbing scenes. The artist realizes her narratives with seemingly innocuous means of design: The self-formed figures of cloth and Plasticine create the impression of a puppet- or marionette-theater, recall the clay figures of children's television. They only seem strange at a first glance. Their distorted and deformed bodies ultimately present a theatrical performance which may be associated with themes such as obsession, power, desire and violence. The filmic works are accompanied not only by the melodic compositions of Hans Berg, but increasingly by installational and sculptural works as well. For her contribution this year to the 53rd Venice Biennale, Djurberg was awarded the Silver Lion as best young artist. She is known in Hannover as a participant in the exhibition Made in Germany.
michael sailstorfer
november 26, 2010 to february 6, 2011
The works of Michael Sailstorfer (* 1979 in Felden, Fils) are already familiar to the visitors of the kestnergesellschaft from the group exhibition Made in Germany in 2007. The shooting star of the German sculptural scene made his appearance there with two space-encompassing works: a Ferrari tire and a sound-walk in the Lichtgraben. His interest is focused primarily on the dynamic interplay between stillness and movement, on the naked physical circumstances of the objects which he enriches with his own ideas and manners of utilization. His works go far beyond visual perception and address additional senses, even sometimes approaching the border of pain. For his solo exhibition in the kestnergesellschaft Sailstorfer, who studied in Munich with Olaf Metzel, will develop a series of new works.
joachim koester
november 26, 2010 to february 6, 2011
The Danish artist Joachim Koester (* 1962 in Copenhagen) works in the media of photography and film. With his camera, he appropriates historically or mythically charged sites and investigates them in terms of their present status quo. Thus in The Kant Walks, he examines the former Königsberg and current Kaliningrad for the traces which the philosopher Immanuel Kant left in the cultural memory of that city. In his recent works, Koester has become increasingly interested in the human body's modes of expression and gesture which can be followed back to ritual activities, such as in Tarantism. Koester participated during 1997 in the Documenta X, and during 2005 in the Venice Biennale.