Light glances, colours, music, and the traces of religious spirits - the year 2008, according to the will of the Munich house of art will flourish in full splendor of the aesthetic, as highlighted at the annual press conference. Fortunately the significant Munich color field painter Rupprecht Geiger celebrates just on 26th january 2008 his 100th birthday. In addition to a large retrospective at the Lenbachhaus (we reported) is the Red Trombe 1985 to see at the Haus der Kunst (House of Art). A huge, tent-like facility, which allows to be around it and to delicate oneself in the radiant power of the color red.
The installation at the House of Art, to which the artworks "MorgenRot" and "AbendRot" from the year 2000 belong, will be on display from 25 Januar to 08 May 2008. With Luc Tuymans's "When the spring comes" will then, after the red light of Geiger has spreaded the winter, a decolourized cool spring turn on, aptly served by East European museums.
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The curators Dr. Stephanie Rosenthal and Patrizia Dander certified Tuymans accordingly, he "leaves room for a subtle discomfort" and sets specific events or issues "superficially" peacefully. In fact the clothing in the guise of historical documentation lights the the surface of photographic images, illustrates in this extent representation as such and contrasts the dynamic of monumentalism caused by the principle of choice, by calling attention to the deficiencies of authenticity in the historical discourse in general. In the House of Art the curators will show and at the same time reduce these aspects with the help of original documents, which Tuymans's paintings are based on, and which will be included in the exhibition. One exception will be the photographs of the Nazi concentration camps. Tuymans' representations, for example the concentration camps of Dachau, are sometimes idyllically simplified to something deserted and purely architectural, while by their black and white almost intrusive reminiscent to a Murnau'sche landscape with snow. They mark a kind of overwhelmingly no man's land between an aesthetically immanent self-critique of representation and a pseudocritical exculpation, to the extent that they, as figure sheets of propaganda, recommend to definitely give up the question "Had it been possible to know or to see anything?" The "deconstructive" aspect of postmodern Tuymans's painting behaves so far, coupled with the always pleasant identifiability and brightness of its representations, striking uncritically. Even by the biographical relevant catholicity, but also because of the restriction on representation and abstraction - it could negatively be judged as the complete exclusion of experience – Tuymans affirms in his works religious beliefs. The "superficial peace" in his work group "Les Revenants" of 2007, which deals according to the curators with the Jesuit Order and the staging of ecclesiastical power, can be checked during the exhibition from 12th March until 12th May 2008: whether the art as a celebration of pure representation facility is not considered equal, but inferior, only „Ancilla“ and nourished just by the sunshine, in addition and contrast to the Catholic Church, as the same, but higher architecture of assertions, whose hierarchies are proclaimed to be lighted by divine inspiration.
The bright and the poor living in the anarchic bundle of the profane are the colorful contrapoints to Tuymans's silent heights. The photographs by Martin Parr, shown from 07th May until 17th August gather documents of hardship and social protest during the British Thatcherism, and, in the more recent work, insights into the "New Decadence", in particular in Russia, whose assets currently inject more in the British luxury industry - from the private school to the Burberry underpants - than any political savings or spendings could ever manage.
Robert Rauschenberg brings Internationality into the game, whose very concentrated work from the seventies, inspired by travels to Italy, France, India and Jerusalem, will be exhibited from 09th May to 14th September 2008. In addition to an art exhibition on the 200th anniversary of the Munich Academy of Art, in particular historical painting and the work of female students in the 19th Century before their exclusion from the study, furthermore exhibitions on the subject of photography (William Eggleston) and print (Munich editions), the summer and autumn will present projects, one of which is created in collaboration with the Centre George Pompidou and curated by Jean de Loisy and Angela Lamp, and after the presentation in Paris of 06 Mai to 11 August 2008 will be issued at the Haus der Kunst in Munich from autumn, 19th September until 11th Januar 2009.
The exhibition „Spuren des Geistigen. Traces of the religious intellect. Traces du Sacré“
promises an almost panoramic view of individual approaches to the Christian religion among artists since the Romantic at about 1800 to contemporary art.
By considering as appropriate nearly all self-declarations and art that is christian, even if only in respect to perhaps wrong assessments by art institutions or art-critics, collecting thus more than 200 works from the period of two, actually three centuries on this topic, already in the short perspective by the curator Angela Lamp was suggested that the conceptual basis of this still very challenging because thematic exhibition may become a weak point. The approach is openly uncritically based on Odo Marquardt, who theorized in „Abschied vom Prinzipiellen“. (Reclam, Stuttgart 1981) the individual authors of the new (and now classical) german literatur of the 18th und 19th century.
The 19th century preoccupation with the problem of theodicy and the fail of the Catholic dogma provides a highly individualized preoccupation with religion and (or) their compensation in the arts.
But to what extent the traces of the religious intellectual are genuinely "compensatory" or not based on the Christian religion but on different bases in the broadest sense of religious reference remains in the exhibition unconsidered. It goes without saying, that the difference to functional forms of representation using religious form is not systematized, too – for example, strategies of representation Roland Barthes described in his „Mythen des Alltags“. Sometimes a cross is enough, sometimes a critic, then suffering forms of inspiration or individual fantasies, for a subsumption under the "traces of the religious intellectual". Thus, what was originally a rejection of Catholic faith guidelines developes, perhaps unfortunate, to a far too huge squid, who from its suction cups drips still the spirit of the Pope.
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Finally, something fresh and critical: The artist duo Allora & Calzadilla, well known through actions and site-work in various media, will develope for the gallery in the House of the Friends of Art („Haus der Freunde der Kunst at Haus der Kunst) a work which, employs the influence of Turkish music on the classical music of the West. Beethoven and the Janitscharen chapells are - because of well-known works such as "clamor" of 2006 and "Sediments sentiment" of 2007 - expected to fill rooms with music, surprising the visitors with condensations of musical architectures, who, in amazing ways highlights the appellative "contentness" of abstract aesthetic perceptions.
Haus der Kunst
Prinzregentenstrasse 1
D - 80538 München
Tel + 49 - (0)89 - 21 127 115
Fax + 49 - (0)89 - 21 127 157
http://www.hausderkunst.de
Programmvorschau 2008:
Schedule 2008:
Rupprecht Geiger. Rupprecht Geiger. Farbe tanken für neue Energie. Color for new energy. 25th January to 08th May 2008.
Luc Tuymans. When the spring comes. 02nd März to 12th May 2008.
Martin Parr. Parrworld. 07th May to 17th August 2008
Robert Rauschenberg. Travelling '70 bis '76
14th May to 14th September 2008
"The test of strength" - 200 years of art academy in Munich. 31st May to 31st August 2008
Allora & Calzadilla. June to September 2008
Traces of Intellectual. Traces du Sacré. 19th September to 11th January 2009.
Garin Nugroho, „Opera Jawa“, 19th September to 11th January 2009
Munich unlimited 1967 to 2007. Munich editions of Beuys to Richter 1967 to 2007.
17th October - January 2009
William Eggleston, in the spring of 2009.
Photos of the annual press conference (desk and the stage: Chris Derçon and exhibition curators): Dr. U. Ritter
Photos (c) by the artists:
Luc Tuymans
The time (1/ 4) 1988
Oil on cardboard
37 x 40 cm
© Luc Tuymans
Courtesy: Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp
Martin Parr
Moscow
Moscow Fashion Week, 2004
© Martin Parr
Giorgio De Chirico
The Great Metaphysician, 1917
Oil on canvas
65.5 cm x 104.8
Private Collection
