2014 exhibition program
Kunstverein Göttingen
Gotmarstraße 1
37073 Göttingen
T +0551 44899
info [at] kunstvereingoettingen.de
Nevin Aladag: Zugabe (Encore)
January 19–March 9
The exhibition presents works by Nevin Aladag, which address public space as a realm where belonging and cultural identity are constantly being renegotiated and reformulated. From intimate stagings, to interventions, sound pieces, video installations, and photography, Aladag’s oeuvre examines these processes through playful recombinations of ordinary objects and personal appropriations of pop culture, subculture, and tradition. Exploring the tensions between the expression of individuality and belonging, Aladag makes us aware of this kind of everyday performance as a defining element of our contemporary social fabric.
movement matters
Nikolaus Gansterer (Austria), Laura McLardy (UK/Germany),
Antonio Paucar (Peru), Madeline Stillwell (USA)
March 23–May 4
The exhibition presents four emerging artists whose work concerns the translation of action into material. With performance practices that are based on the gestural act of drawing (Stillwell), choreography (McLardy), the use of the body as an artistic medium (Paucar), or the active mediation of ideas and concepts in the form of diagrams and installations (Gansterer), the artists all pursue a manner of working in which process is intimately linked with product, whereby a momentary action is inscribed in space and form.
Curator: Kordula Fritze-Srbic
Julius von Bismarck: Egocentric System
June 15–July 27
The work of Julius von Bismarck spans the field of art, science, and technology. Through his inventions and installations he investigates the human sensory apparatus, using the laws of physics to challenge our habitual perceptions. Produced for the exhibition in Göttingen, his Egocentric System is a large, constantly rotating paraboloid—a turning convex surface—which the artist will inhabit for an extended time period. Due to the combination of centrifugal and gravitational force exerted on the object, one can stand upright on the inclined surface of the object without having the sense of being on a tilted surface. Bismarck will document the shift in his subjective experience brought about by living in a machine of his own making.
Kirstine Roepstorff: Gezeiten (Tides)
September 7–October 26
Kirstine Roepstorff employs the medium of collage to create startling visual worlds out of found imagery and new materials through the use of copies, cutouts, and rearrangements. Marking 20 years of the Danish artist’s practice, the exhibition brings together seminal works from different periods in her oeuvre, works that she has maintained in her personal collection—as a documentation and reflection of her own working process. Her technique of “reappropriating” imagery is coupled with an interest in negative space as both a formal and conceptual element in her work. The exhibition invites viewers to follow the rhythms of repetition, interruption, and duration within the artist’s development and dialogue with her own practice.
Curator: Kordula Fritze-Srbic
Rituals and Spirits | Transformations of the Modern in Southeast Asia
November 2–December 21
Riel Hilario (Philippines), Nguyen Trinh Thi (Vietnam), Yudi Noor (Indonesia/Germany), John Frank Sabado (Philippines), Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapore), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), Entang Wiharso (Indonesia)
The exhibition is a collaboration with Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia (DORISEA), a German research network dedicated to investigating the relationship between modernity and religion in this region, where diverse belief structures have played an important role in shaping modernization processes. Focusing on the subtle yet omnipresent influence of religion in the everyday, the exhibition features artists who overlay contemporary life with aspects of the mythical or supernatural. Their works speak of invisible forces, modern enchantment, and karmic gestures. Many depict a haunted landscape where living beings are transformed or hybridized to invoke figures or events from the past. Mythology merges almost seamlessly with the contemporary, dissolving the boundaries between different realities and offering perspectives that are teeming, clamorous, and unresolved.
Folkloric narratives, sacred objects, ceremonial artifacts, documentary materials as well as elements from popular culture will be shown alongside the artworks. These serve to illuminate the concerns of each individual artist and granting visitors a view into both the contemporary context of Southeast Asia and relevant historical influences.
Curator: Lauren Reid
Yukihiro Taguchi: Special Commission
January / February 2014
Through his engaging and humorous stop-motion films Yukihiro Taguchi (Japan) explores his environment and brings his surroundings to life. In addition, he is interested in temporary dwellings and do-it-yourself culture, having constructed his own living quarters on an empty lot in Berlin-Kreuzberg. For three weeks the artist will come to Göttingen and produce a film on-site, which engages with the local public and reflects the artist’s unique activation of the city’s historic landscape.
Artistic Director: Laura Schleussner, l.schleussner [at] kunstvereingoettingen.de