Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

KRIWET — YESTER ́N ́TODAY

In spring 2011, the Kun­sthalle Düssel­dorf will be hold­ing the world's first com­pre­hen­sive so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion of the col­lect­ed works of Fer­di­nand Kri­wet, who was born in Düssel­dorf in 1942. Fer­di­nand Kri­wet is a pi­o­neer of me­dia art.

Al­ready in the 1960s he was cre­at­ing ex­hi­bi­tions, the­atre per­for­mances and ra­dio plays ex­am­in­ing how over­stim­u­la­tion from the mass me­dia af­fects our view­ing habits and analysing the lan­guage of tele­vi­sion, ad­ver­tis­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy. Sim­i­lar to the fine arts, which since the 1950s had been mov­ing fur­ther and fur­ther away from tra­di­tion­al dis­ci­plines such as sculp­ture and paint­ing, post-war lit­er­a­ture was al­so search­ing for new, con­tem­po­rary forms of ex­pres­sion. Kri­wet, whose roots lie in con­crete po­et­ry, de­scribes him­self as a vi­su­al po­et who fo­cus­es on lan­guage. When he was just 19 years old, Cologne pub­lish­ing house Du­Mont Ver­lag pub­lished his first work, Ro­tor. For Kri­wet, lan­guage is as much about im­ages as about words. The texts in his Rund­scheiben (discs), a col­lec­tion of works he pro­duced in the ear­ly 1960s, are am­bigu­ous and in­de­ter­mi­nate and have nei­ther be­gin­nings nor end­ings. With no in­di­ca­tion as to the di­rec­tion the texts should be read in, read­ers were forced to pro­duce mean­ing from the con­tent them­selves. In the years that fol­lowed, Kri­wet's neon let­ter­ing, wall paint­ings and sig­nage in­creas­ing­ly fea­tured in pub­lic spaces. Be­fore he be­gan re­treat­ing from the art world in the late 1980s, he pro­duced sev­er­al ra­dio pro­grammes and de­signed a num­ber of Per­cent for Art pro­jects, in­clud­ing the coat of arms in the state par­lia­ment of North Rhine-West­phalia and a light & text col­umn for a post of­fice in Es­sen. Kri­wet's in­flu­ence on the art mar­ket was nev­er as strong as the ef­fect he ex­ert­ed, and con­tin­ues to ex­ert, on oth­er artists. Over the past five years, how­ev­er, his work has been en­joy­ing re­newed in­ter­est among cu­ra­tors and gallery own­ers and has fea­tured in a va­ri­ety of shows, such as those at Lud­low 38 in New York and BQ in Berlin.

The last time Kri­wet's work was on show in his home town of Düssel­dorf was in 1975 in an ex­hi­bi­tion at the Kun­stvere­in für die Rhein­lande und West­falen and in con­nec­tion with the leg­endary Cream­cheese club. Over 35 years lat­er, the ret­ro­spec­tive ex­hi­bi­tion at the Kun­sthalle Düssel­dorf will of­fer the world's first com­pre­hen­sive overview of the artist's mul­ti­faceted work. In ad­di­tion to the first Rund­scheiben and Po­em Paint­ings, the show will fea­ture his au­dio and spo­ken texts, pub­li­ca­tions, film and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions, neon works and mixed-me­dia in­stal­la­tions, as well as new pieces and some pro­duced es­pe­cial­ly for the ex­hi­bi­tion. The Kun­sthalle Düssel­dorf is pre­sent­ing the work of an artist who, right at the start of the mass me­dia's ad­vances in­to our so­ci­ety, was ex­plor­ing the mean­ing of me­dia com­pe­tence and whose work to­day, in the age of the in­ter­net, is more rel­e­vant than ev­er.

The ex­hi­bi­tion will be ac­com­pa­nied by the first pub­li­ca­tion to fea­ture a com­pre­hen­sive overview of Kri­wet's works, with nu­mer­ous colour pic­tures and texts by Sven Beck­stette, Elodie Ev­ers, Gre­gor Jansen, Klaus Schöning, Christoph Ben­jamin Schulz and many oth­ers.