more Konzeption Conception now
1 February–19 April 2015
Opening: Sunday, 1 February, noon
Museum Morsbroich
Gustav-Heinemann-Strasse 80
D-51377 Leverkusen
Germany
With works by Maria Anwander, Michał Budny, Matt Calderwood, Sara Christensen, Natalie Czech, Willem de Rooij, Elmgreen & Dragset, Christian Falsnaes, Henning Fehr and Philipp Rühr, Ceal Floyer, David Horvitz, Bethan Huws, Charbel-joseph H. Boutros, Sven Johne, Annette Kelm, Jonathan Monk, Slavs and Tatars, Juergen Staack, Fiete Stolte, Studio for Propositional Cinema, Jan Timme, Adam Vačkář, and Jorinde Voigt
and with documents and project sketches from the exhibition Konzeption Conception (1969) by Keith Arnatt, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Iain Baxter, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Marcel Broodthaers, stanley brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Eugenia P. Butler, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Paul Cotton, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, Richard Jackson, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Michael Kirby, Joseph Kosuth, David Lamelas, Sol LeWitt, Bruce McLean, Bruce Nauman, Giuseppe Penone, Adrian Piper, Sigmar Polke, Emilio Prini, Markus Raetz, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Fred Sandback, Richard Sladden, Robert Smithson, Timm Ulrichs, Bernar Venet, Lawrence Weiner, ZAJ – Walter Marchetti
as well as works from the Works on Paper Collection of Museum Morsbroich byMel Bochner, Daniel Buren, Sigmar Polke, Fred Sandback, and Lawrence Weiner
Ideas are works!
Conceptual Art, a radically new form of artistic work, emerged in the 1960s. To this very day, its artistic strategies are extremely attractive, repeatedly providing reference points for the work of young contemporary artists. Yet it is not really possible to carry on those historical concepts and strategies, unbroken, into the present. Instead, reference to them also involves the challenge to change them.
When the exhibition Konzeption Conception was shown at Museum Morsbroich for about a month in 1969 both visitors and critics put up considerable resistance to the presentation. That project was not only one of the first institutional exhibitions of Conceptual Art, it was also the first exhibition to include the term firmly in its title. The works on show then, by more than 40 artists chosen by the Dusseldorf gallery owner Konrad Fischer and presented jointly with the museum director at the time, Rolf Wedewer, represented new forms of artistic expression. The focus of the show was no longer the finished original, but the idea, the sketch, the description, in brief, the concept.
more Konzeption Conception now
The Conceptual Art approaches presented in Leverkusen in 1969 form the point of the departure for the current exhibition. More than 20 young international artists engage through their work with the Conceptual Art of the 1960s.
Fully aware of the conceptual positions of the 1960s, these contemporary artists deliberately avail themselves of some of the strategies presented in 1969, while also using new components designated by Noemi Smolik in her text for the exhibition as “contaminations” of the conceptual—for example, the idea of the folkloric or the everyday. In other words, these artists are not interested in an unbroken continuation of the historical Conceptual Art.
The reflection on conceptual strategies in the works of the younger artists as well as the “shift” they contain also consider changed themes in changed times. They generate a new topicality and relevance for conceptual expressive possibilities. Ceal Floyer, for example, who for her work Title variable (2001–09) spans a black rubber band across the whole wall, thus undertaking a kind of surveying measurement—albeit paradoxically with an elastic material. This work recalls the space surveys of Timm Ulrichs or those of Mel Bochner, who in the 1969 exhibition drew lines on the walls and noted down the exact measurements.
Curator of the exhibition is Stefanie Kreuzer.
Two catalogues in a slipcase will be published by Kettler, Dortmund to mark the exhibition: the exhibition catalogue more Konzeption Conception now, and, as a facsimile, the original 1969 catalogue of the legendary exhibition Konzeption Conception, which has long been out of print.
*Image: Studio for Propositional Cinema, Public notice! / Public square, Brussels / Intersection of ave. de la Porte de Hal / Hallepoortlaan, rue de l’Argonne / Argonnestraat & rue de Merode / De Merodestraat / Attention! / From 5–8 March, 2014, 8:00 to 12:00 […], 2014. 48 photographic prints, each 111.76 × 152.40 cm, to be installed based on a pre-determined schedule over a period of four hours then removed and dispersed. Courtesy of Studio for Propositional Cinema.
