GfZK

The longing to be different from others, to be individual and to have an unmistakable identity, is opposed to those ideals of beauty and standardised conceptions that are emphasised by the media. Images of authenticity, genuineness and uprightness are deliberately used in the advertising industry to support the marketing of products and services. Here recourse is had to the same sort of formulae for pathos that are familiar from the history of art. A fund of gestures, poses, attributes, composition strategies and colour symbolisms is created which– stripped of their religious and mythological background – will be suitable for the artificial generation of emotions. In their films, drawings, paintings and installations, Markus Muntean and Adi Rosenblum work with these pathetic formulae from art history and advertising. The deliberate aim is to emphasise contradictions between pictorial and text information, passivity and activity, authenticity and artificiality, while pointing to the plurivalency of cultural codes.

The exhibition has been organised in cooperation with MUSAC – the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon [Museum of Contemporary Art of Castile and Leon] in Spain. The wide-ranging exhibition at the GfZK will be backed up by a presentation of films by Muntean & Rosenblum during the MachtMusik Festival, in collaboration with the Forum Zeitgenössischer Musik [Forum of Contemporary Music] Leipzig.

The exhibition is accompanied by a book, published by JRP/Ringier, Zurich in collaboration with MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon).