JOHANNES WOHNSEIFER.MUSEUM LUDWIG Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from PopArt, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It also features many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. KOLN To get to Johannes Wohnseifer's recent exhibition, which was curated by Rita Kersting and housed in the project room of the Museum Ludwig Koln, one had to pass through the permanent collection; in the middle of Pop Art, one came up against a white nylon curtain on which "MUSEUM" was written in huge black type. Pushing the curtain aside, one entered a large room only to stop at the sight of sixteen square wood panels laid across the floor (each approximately 6.5 by 6.5 feet) and painted in colorful monochromes. The luminosity luminosity, in astronomy, the rate at which energy of all types is radiated by an object in all directions. A star's luminosity depends on its size and its temperature, varying as the square of the radius and the fourth power of the absolute surface temperature. of the panels initially caused even the Carl Andre-seasoned visitor to step back for a moment before venturing inside. Set up amid the pane}s were three pedestals of various sizes on which the artist presented, under Plexiglas, prototypes for the sneakers sneakers Noun, pl US, Canad, Austral & NZ canvas shoes with rubber soles sneakers npl (US) → zapatos mpl de lona; zapatillas fpl he developed in collaboration with Adidas. In combination with three paintings of eagles based on pictures by Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter (born February 9, 1932) is a prominent German artist. Richter is considered by some critics as one of the most important German artists of the post-World War II period and is also one of the world's most expensive, with his paintings often selling for several (some of which were made for Marcel Broodthaers's 1968-72 Musee d'Art Moderne mo·derne adj. Striving to be modern in appearance or style but lacking taste or refinement; pretentious. [French, modern, from Old French; see modern.] Adj. 1. , Departement des Aigles) and extracts from On Kawara's journal that were dated 1967 (the year Wohnseifer was born), it became clear that the exhibition was about more than being just another variation of the now-exhausted art of crossovers, in this case between (sport) design and art. The panels' colors (medium green, lilac, blue, light blue, yellow, and orange) quote Otl Alcher's color scheme for the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, a palette meant to radiate ra·di·ate v. 1. To spread out in all directions from a center. 2. To emit or be emitted as radiation. ra calm and help banish the dark shadows of the previous staging of the games in Germany, in 1936 in Berlin. Collective and private memory fuse in this installation to form a thick web of references (Wohnseifer counts the interruption of the broadcast of the Munich games to cover the terrorist attack as his first memory of television). Similarly connected are the writings about private and public occurrences extracted from Kawara's journals, which Wohnseifer presents in enlarged form on white nylon, highlighting a few of them in yellow or magenta. The quotes range from "NEW YORK New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of STATE'S NEW DIVORCE LAW FECTIVE [sic] TODAY" to "WE REJECT WE RESIGN" and end with Kawara's observation "I STILL HAVE A PAIN IN MY EYES In My Eyes was a Boston straight edge band that spearheaded the 1997 youth crew revival along with Ten Yard Fight, Bane, The Trust, Fastbreak and Floorpunch. The band and its members were a part of the hot bed that was the Boston music scene in the late 90's and early 2000's. ." Through his museum-style presentation of the sneakers and recourse to Kawara and Broodthaers, Wohnseifer insinuates himself into the long genealogy of institutional critique. And just as he refuses to privilege or even distinguish between personal experience and the affairs of state, he freely conflates sports and current art history in an installation that interrogates, with humor and ironic distance, the purpose and function of the museum. High and low unite, and the light-footedness of the glamorous sneakers perched for show becomes an effective metaphor for (real and conceptual) movement in the museum. Translated from German by Elizabeth Felicella. |
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