the big aspiration of the small picture
01 Dec 2018 - 02 Feb 2019
THE BIG ASPIRATION OF THE SMALL PICTURE
1 December 2018 – 2 February 2019
Georges Adéagbo Eric Baudelaire Nina Canell
Mariana Castillo Deball Jimmie Durham
Hans-Peter Feldmann Ester Fleckner Luca Frei
Ludwig Gosewitz Ian Kiaer Arthur Köpcke
Dave McKenzie Elisabeth Neudörfl Peter Piller
Eva von Platen Vaclav Pozarek Michael Rakowitz
Dieter Roth Tomas Schmit Shimabuku
Ingrid Wiener Haegue Yang
One of Dieter Roth’s most important books, Mundunculum from 1967, is about perception, vocabulary and the world. In one of the pictures in this book, Roth shows “how a small picture can have a big aspiration, and a big picture can have a small aspiration”. It’s a sketch that outlines the impact of seeing – in the mind of the beholder, big can have a relatively small impact, whereas small can have a bigger impact. The sketch is of magnificent simplicity, and that’s the crux of the matter.
We chose Dieter Roth’s drawing as a motto for our exhibition, which devotes itself to the small format. On show are drawings and objects from all artists represented by the gallery.
Georges Adéagbo develops installations that fill rooms with objects from various backgrounds and cultures. In Benin, Hamburg or on one of his journeys, collages and chains of associations emerge, which he later applies to a room. We present collages with the theme “Revolution”, which he made in preparation for the Shanghai Biennale in 2016.
Eric Baudelaire has become known through his films that explore political procedures and events. His last film deals with the complex theme of terrorism in France. Baudelaire’s photographs are inventories of social spaces and traces of history, decay and resistance. The photograph Refusons le monde de ceux qui ont (2010) presents this sentence as graffiti in Paris.
Nina Canell makes laboratory-like experiments, using materials such as cables, copper pipes, rubber and florescent tubes in her sculptures and installations. In her work, she makes visible the things that go unnoticed in our everyday living and which shape our communication. In the Cucumbery (2018) series, she combines computer processors with synthetically made cucumber slices.
Mariana Castillo Deball frequently occupies herself with buried knowledge from past epochs and cultures; her last exhibition was primarily concerned with the calendar of the indigenous Mesoamerican people. She shows the object Tonalpohualli Zollstock (2018), which speaks of various ideas concerning time and space.
Jimmie Durham once identified himself as a “theoretical biologist”. He investigates behaviours and norms of coexistence within various societies. This also led him to an engagement with language and writing, the origin and function of which he often ponders over in his drawings. On show is a drawing from 2003, titled Anomally.
Hans-Peter Feldmann is known for his use of found photographs, postcards, toys, etc.. He uses the most banal things as Readymades. For our exhibition, he sent a potato and the measurements for a plinth.
Ester Flecker deals with deviations from the norm: the imperfect. Her woodcuts critically examine the body and definitions of gender roles. She contributes with new prints from her ongoing series Arguments for desire.
Over the last few years, Luca Frei has been exploring archives and the artistic restating of spaces for action in depth. Such examples include the music lab of Hermann Scherchen, and more recently the 1931 experimental exhibition in Japan that combined the design principles and preliminary course praxis of the Bauhaus with the Japanese modernist movement and local crafts, and how the interdisciplinary artist group Jikken Kōbō expanded upon it in the 1950s. He shows two new collages from 2018 titled Seeds and Pods.
Ludwig Gosewitz’s work primarily comprises drawings, texts and glass objects. He intensively utilised the medium of drawing, amongst other things, to perform astrological calculations. We show five pencil sketches from 1984.
Ian Kiaer’s installations and objects made from models, paintings and found materials refer to utopian approaches towards architecture, literature, philosophy and art. The object Tooth House, brown (2015) is made from wood and a fragment of acrylic glass. The project Endnote, tooth refers to concepts by the architect Frederick Kiesler.
In the early 60s, Arthur Köpcke published his Reading-Pieces Work-Pieces Reading/Work-Pieces in a hectographed manuscript as artwork. It contains 129 texts, puzzles, questions and instructions such as, “Fill with own imagination”. We exhibit three objects, onto which he has stuck his treatment labels: a beer bottle, a matchbox and a folding box with two mirrors.
Dave McKenzie’s newest performance deals with “furtive movements” – a term for allegedly suspect movements that gives the US police the right to stop and search passers-by. This law is controversial as it favours “racial profiling”. Two collages with the title Furtive Movements (Post Movement Studies) are part of the exhibition.
Elisabeth Neudörfl is known for her documentary landscape and architecture photography. She writes:
“I thought about the small picture and what sense it makes in photography, where you can make any image large or small. The image whose size remains fixed from the beginning is the Polaroid.” She shows two Polaroid self-portraits in the exhibition.
Peter Piller’s drawings were initially snapshots from office everyday life or sketches of his city circumnavigations. Since, records of his observations arise out of lengthy sessions at university or protocols of boredom in hotels, and are made upon their corresponding letterheads. In a new series, he traces feelings and physical states, for example in the drawing Erinnerung ans Betrunken-Sein (Memories of being drunk) (2018).
Eva von Platens’ work comprises drawings, films and books. We are presenting the drawing Fünf Kontinente (Five Continents) (2011), in which she presents Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe and America in the form of a schnitzel and side dishes on a plate.
Vaclav Pozarek’s sculptures and drawings move with precise autonomy between conceptual art and minimalism. “How big is small?” was his first reaction to our invitation. He then chose drawings and collages from 1968 to 2018 and a circular object titled Knie (Knee) (1988), which is formed out of pipe parts.
By Michael Rakowitz, we present papier-mâché reproductions of destroyed artefacts from the Assyrian-Babylonian culture, which adhere to the size of their originals. Alongside large reliefs from the Palace of Nimrud, which we showed at Art Basel Unlimited 2018 and as part of our last exhibition, he also crafts groups of miniatures, which demonstrate their beauty. All of the originals are missing, destroyed or untraceable.
Dieter Roth, whose drawing serves as a motto for the exhibition, mastered all formats. Alongside spatially encompassing installations, objects made from waste, paintings, tablecloths, diaries and texts, are thousands of drawings. On show are four drawings from 1971 and an object from 1968: a puppet stuck in chocolate.
Tomas Schmit’s work consists of concepts, word play and drawings. For the first time, we present the unique edition sch/8 (1971), which contains 18 drawings and objects. The intention is that even the smallest piece of paper (e.g. the 6x6 cm stereo piece) comes into its own as an independent work. Also on show is the drawing my head is ahead of what my hands are doing / my head is a head of what my hands are doing (1971).
Shimabuku immerses himself in puzzles observed within the animal kingdom, e.g. mimicry. In the exhibition, we show photographs from the seahorse series, whose disguise is perfect – it looks just like a plant.
Ingrid Wiener is famed for her tapestries in which she weaves notes, shopping lists or sketches of mathematically unsolved problems. The 14x7 cm tapestry, Bierglas von der ‘Exil’-Tapete (Beer glass from the ‘Exil’ wallpaper), (1998) pays homage to Dieter Roth, who designed the wallpaper in the Berlin artists’ pub “Exil”. Another tapestry displays the note that hangs in Wiener’s loom and offers a glimpse through to the room behind. It’s a collage according the motto: “You can also weave what you can’t see.”
Haegue Yang, whose large blind installations were part of her retrospective this year at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, concentrates her work on the design of the everyday and its standards. For her sculptures, she uses industrially manufactured products and often juxtaposes them with handicraft techniques from different cultures. On show is a mobile titled Plate Mobile, as well as a sculpture manufactured out of empty light bulb boxes; both works are from 2010.
Thanks to all of the artists for their contributions to this exhibition!
1 December 2018 – 2 February 2019
Georges Adéagbo Eric Baudelaire Nina Canell
Mariana Castillo Deball Jimmie Durham
Hans-Peter Feldmann Ester Fleckner Luca Frei
Ludwig Gosewitz Ian Kiaer Arthur Köpcke
Dave McKenzie Elisabeth Neudörfl Peter Piller
Eva von Platen Vaclav Pozarek Michael Rakowitz
Dieter Roth Tomas Schmit Shimabuku
Ingrid Wiener Haegue Yang
One of Dieter Roth’s most important books, Mundunculum from 1967, is about perception, vocabulary and the world. In one of the pictures in this book, Roth shows “how a small picture can have a big aspiration, and a big picture can have a small aspiration”. It’s a sketch that outlines the impact of seeing – in the mind of the beholder, big can have a relatively small impact, whereas small can have a bigger impact. The sketch is of magnificent simplicity, and that’s the crux of the matter.
We chose Dieter Roth’s drawing as a motto for our exhibition, which devotes itself to the small format. On show are drawings and objects from all artists represented by the gallery.
Georges Adéagbo develops installations that fill rooms with objects from various backgrounds and cultures. In Benin, Hamburg or on one of his journeys, collages and chains of associations emerge, which he later applies to a room. We present collages with the theme “Revolution”, which he made in preparation for the Shanghai Biennale in 2016.
Eric Baudelaire has become known through his films that explore political procedures and events. His last film deals with the complex theme of terrorism in France. Baudelaire’s photographs are inventories of social spaces and traces of history, decay and resistance. The photograph Refusons le monde de ceux qui ont (2010) presents this sentence as graffiti in Paris.
Nina Canell makes laboratory-like experiments, using materials such as cables, copper pipes, rubber and florescent tubes in her sculptures and installations. In her work, she makes visible the things that go unnoticed in our everyday living and which shape our communication. In the Cucumbery (2018) series, she combines computer processors with synthetically made cucumber slices.
Mariana Castillo Deball frequently occupies herself with buried knowledge from past epochs and cultures; her last exhibition was primarily concerned with the calendar of the indigenous Mesoamerican people. She shows the object Tonalpohualli Zollstock (2018), which speaks of various ideas concerning time and space.
Jimmie Durham once identified himself as a “theoretical biologist”. He investigates behaviours and norms of coexistence within various societies. This also led him to an engagement with language and writing, the origin and function of which he often ponders over in his drawings. On show is a drawing from 2003, titled Anomally.
Hans-Peter Feldmann is known for his use of found photographs, postcards, toys, etc.. He uses the most banal things as Readymades. For our exhibition, he sent a potato and the measurements for a plinth.
Ester Flecker deals with deviations from the norm: the imperfect. Her woodcuts critically examine the body and definitions of gender roles. She contributes with new prints from her ongoing series Arguments for desire.
Over the last few years, Luca Frei has been exploring archives and the artistic restating of spaces for action in depth. Such examples include the music lab of Hermann Scherchen, and more recently the 1931 experimental exhibition in Japan that combined the design principles and preliminary course praxis of the Bauhaus with the Japanese modernist movement and local crafts, and how the interdisciplinary artist group Jikken Kōbō expanded upon it in the 1950s. He shows two new collages from 2018 titled Seeds and Pods.
Ludwig Gosewitz’s work primarily comprises drawings, texts and glass objects. He intensively utilised the medium of drawing, amongst other things, to perform astrological calculations. We show five pencil sketches from 1984.
Ian Kiaer’s installations and objects made from models, paintings and found materials refer to utopian approaches towards architecture, literature, philosophy and art. The object Tooth House, brown (2015) is made from wood and a fragment of acrylic glass. The project Endnote, tooth refers to concepts by the architect Frederick Kiesler.
In the early 60s, Arthur Köpcke published his Reading-Pieces Work-Pieces Reading/Work-Pieces in a hectographed manuscript as artwork. It contains 129 texts, puzzles, questions and instructions such as, “Fill with own imagination”. We exhibit three objects, onto which he has stuck his treatment labels: a beer bottle, a matchbox and a folding box with two mirrors.
Dave McKenzie’s newest performance deals with “furtive movements” – a term for allegedly suspect movements that gives the US police the right to stop and search passers-by. This law is controversial as it favours “racial profiling”. Two collages with the title Furtive Movements (Post Movement Studies) are part of the exhibition.
Elisabeth Neudörfl is known for her documentary landscape and architecture photography. She writes:
“I thought about the small picture and what sense it makes in photography, where you can make any image large or small. The image whose size remains fixed from the beginning is the Polaroid.” She shows two Polaroid self-portraits in the exhibition.
Peter Piller’s drawings were initially snapshots from office everyday life or sketches of his city circumnavigations. Since, records of his observations arise out of lengthy sessions at university or protocols of boredom in hotels, and are made upon their corresponding letterheads. In a new series, he traces feelings and physical states, for example in the drawing Erinnerung ans Betrunken-Sein (Memories of being drunk) (2018).
Eva von Platens’ work comprises drawings, films and books. We are presenting the drawing Fünf Kontinente (Five Continents) (2011), in which she presents Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe and America in the form of a schnitzel and side dishes on a plate.
Vaclav Pozarek’s sculptures and drawings move with precise autonomy between conceptual art and minimalism. “How big is small?” was his first reaction to our invitation. He then chose drawings and collages from 1968 to 2018 and a circular object titled Knie (Knee) (1988), which is formed out of pipe parts.
By Michael Rakowitz, we present papier-mâché reproductions of destroyed artefacts from the Assyrian-Babylonian culture, which adhere to the size of their originals. Alongside large reliefs from the Palace of Nimrud, which we showed at Art Basel Unlimited 2018 and as part of our last exhibition, he also crafts groups of miniatures, which demonstrate their beauty. All of the originals are missing, destroyed or untraceable.
Dieter Roth, whose drawing serves as a motto for the exhibition, mastered all formats. Alongside spatially encompassing installations, objects made from waste, paintings, tablecloths, diaries and texts, are thousands of drawings. On show are four drawings from 1971 and an object from 1968: a puppet stuck in chocolate.
Tomas Schmit’s work consists of concepts, word play and drawings. For the first time, we present the unique edition sch/8 (1971), which contains 18 drawings and objects. The intention is that even the smallest piece of paper (e.g. the 6x6 cm stereo piece) comes into its own as an independent work. Also on show is the drawing my head is ahead of what my hands are doing / my head is a head of what my hands are doing (1971).
Shimabuku immerses himself in puzzles observed within the animal kingdom, e.g. mimicry. In the exhibition, we show photographs from the seahorse series, whose disguise is perfect – it looks just like a plant.
Ingrid Wiener is famed for her tapestries in which she weaves notes, shopping lists or sketches of mathematically unsolved problems. The 14x7 cm tapestry, Bierglas von der ‘Exil’-Tapete (Beer glass from the ‘Exil’ wallpaper), (1998) pays homage to Dieter Roth, who designed the wallpaper in the Berlin artists’ pub “Exil”. Another tapestry displays the note that hangs in Wiener’s loom and offers a glimpse through to the room behind. It’s a collage according the motto: “You can also weave what you can’t see.”
Haegue Yang, whose large blind installations were part of her retrospective this year at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, concentrates her work on the design of the everyday and its standards. For her sculptures, she uses industrially manufactured products and often juxtaposes them with handicraft techniques from different cultures. On show is a mobile titled Plate Mobile, as well as a sculpture manufactured out of empty light bulb boxes; both works are from 2010.
Thanks to all of the artists for their contributions to this exhibition!