2013 Peter Mertes Grant: Anne Pöhlmann, Henning Fehr & Philipp Rühr
Maryanne Amacher: Intelligent Life
June 14–August 24, 2014
Opening: Friday 13 June, 7pm
Bonner Kunstverein
Hochstadenring 22
53119 Bonn
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–5pm,
Thursday 11am–7pm
We are pleased to announce the presentation of the 2013 Peter Mertes Grants, Anne Pöhlmann (born 1978, lives in Düsseldorf) and Henning Fehr (born 1985, lives in Düsseldorf) & Philipp Rühr (born 1986, lives in Düsseldorf), as well as the exhibition Maryanne Amacher: Intelligent Life, curated by Axel Wieder in cooperation with the Beethovenstiftung’s festival bonn hoeren 2014.
2013 Peter Mertes Grant: Anne Pöhlmann, Henning Fehr & Philipp Rühr
In the 29th year since the founding of the grant by the Peter Mertes Winery and the Bonner Kunstverein (2013), a jury comprising Regina Barunke, Fanny Gonella, Rita McBride and Christina Végh have selected the graduates of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf Anne Pöhlmann and the artist duo Henning Fehr & Philipp Rühr. The artist duo Henning Fehr and Philipp Rühr realise films in which fiction as a construct of reality and reality in the form of documentary images are interwoven. Both artists studied photography under Christopher Williams. Over and above the medium of film/video, their exhibitions, which can also encompass books, prints or sculptural displays, make up worlds of their own that are characterised by subliminal humour, parodistic interludes and associative comparisons. The artists are presenting their most recent work in the exhibition at the Bonner Kunstverein: In Keine Kontrolle, the political systems of East and West found in the landscape and architecture on the Russian and American sides of the Bering Strait are entered in a dialogue with each other. In her work as a photographer, Anne Pöhlmann is interested in the development, impact and context of photography. Her seemingly objective, reduced works pose questions concerning the medium’s functions. For the most part we now perceive photographic images as they are conveyed digitally on computer monitors or smartphones. The placelessess of the photographic image, which can be seen in the fact that a photo can simultaneously make slightly varied impressions when mounted on different supports, forms the starting point of comprehending the exhibition space as the true site of her pictures’ layout. Pöhlmann presents a series of photographs of textiles in her exhibition, which are printed on fabric. The illustrated texture is used for its qualities (colour and structure) and as an abstract means in order to create a pictorial space. The pictures are processed in such a way that their relationships to reality subtly become fictional, thus confronting us with the boundary of digital photography to reality and our way of seeing.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication (StrzeleckiBooks, Cologne).
Maryanne Amacher: Intelligent Life
The exhibition presents the work of American composer and artist Maryanne Amacher (1938–2009), who counts amongst the most influential personalities in contemporary music. Amacher studied in the 1960s with Karlheinz Stockhausen, and in the 1970s and 1980s worked together with John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Early on, she experimented with relationships between sound and space, and explored the physiological conditions of hearing. Despite her significant production and her substantial influence on a younger generation of artists, she is a kind of “artists’ artist” and is in the European context still known by a mostly specialized public.
The exhibition Intelligent Life shows, for the first time, a comprehensive overview with rarely seen archive material, photography, scores, and sound recordings from the artist. The presentation will focus on two comprehensive groups of works: the series “City Links” (1967–1988) and “Intelligent Life,” which Maryanne Amacher had been intensively developing since the 1980s, both experimenting with the possibilities of new technologies. The exhibition follows the interdisciplinary and research-based practice of the artist and explores Maryanne Amacher’s influence on both the practice of contemporary art and music.
A project of the festival bonn hoeren 2014 from the Beethoven Foundation for Art and Culture Bonn in collaboration with the Bonner Kunstverein, curated by Axel Wieder in collaboration with Bill Dietz, Micah Silver, and Robert The (Maryanne Amacher Archive, Kingston, NY). The exhibition Intelligent Life was first presented in 2012 at the daadgalerie in Berlin.
The exhibitions are supported by:
