Portikus

Intro + Summer Screenings

Portikus XXX

18 Jul - 14 Oct 2017

INTRO + SUMMER SCREENINGS
Portikus XXX
18 July – 14 October 2017

Curated by Franz Hempel & Fabian Schöneich

Portikus is turning thirty. Founded as a small art space on Schöne Aussicht in 1987, we moved from there to the Leinwandhaus and then to the Maininsel. Portikus XXX is the name of our anniversary project that doesn’t look back, but simply keeps moving ahead, not inside Portikus itself, but in the city so important to Portikus: Frankfurt am Main. We leave our space and, with small gestures and major interventions, present new works in urban places that shape the cityscape. In this way, Portikus XXX addresses a broad audience while, at the same time, we continue to do what we’ve been doing in recent years: making exhibitions that stimulate, expand perspectives and ask questions.

What might a minor history of Portikus told through video look like? Helke Bayrle’s Portikus Under Construction gives this history its images, building an institutional memory and body of artworks out of what is almost always erased and obfuscated: work left outside of finalized and public-facing installations within the main gallery. Though the artworks in this screening program are by no means minor in and of themselves, they work outside of the limits of these artists’ previous contributions to the exhibitionary legacy of Portikus. Almost none of these films and videos have been shown within the galleries of Portikus before, yet they provide a vehicle for reflection through their addition and deviation. In an effort to let these relations permeate the methods of this program, groupings of films and videos will together assert the value of lack, the uncertain, the secondary, the obscured, the forgotten, and the unclassifiable. This project attempts to build a minor history of Portikus, inspired by Bayrle, from these foggy positions.