Charlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress

Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean presents Charlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress. The exhibition traces the evolution of the pioneering work of Charlotte Posenenske (b. 1930, Wiesbaden; d. 1985, Frankfurt am Main) during the years 1956–68, a short but prolific period when she was active as an artist. Presented in the Great​ Hall, and across the two upper floor galleries, the exhibition brings together seminal drawings, paintings, sculpture and wall reliefs, including the artist’s final and most iconic modular works. 

The exhibition highlights Posenenske’s critical contribution to the development of serial, site-specific and participatory practices. Embracing reductive geometry and industrial fabrication, Posenenske developed a form of mass-produced minimalism that pointedly addressed the pressing socio-economic concerns of the decade by circumventing the art market and rejecting established formal and cultural hierarchies.

The artist’s radical approach included not placing a limit on editioned artworks and pricing them according to their production cost. Posenenske’s subversive stance towards artworld conventions was also reflected in a decentralised notion of authorship, perceiving it as a collective endeavour that extended to the manufacturing process and the active participation of the audience or “consumers,” who were invited to assemble or manipulate the work.

A commitment to exploring the conditions of the social environment ultimately led her to relinquish her profession as an artist, announcing the decision in the tumultuous month of May 1968. Repositioning the concerns of her object-based practice, she retrained as a sociologist, focusing her work on industrial labour.

Charlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress is organized by Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, New York, in collaboration with MACBA in Barcelona, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf and the Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean.

Curators Jessica Morgan and Alexis Lowry
The presentation of the exhibition at Mudam is curated by Clément Minighetti, assisted by Sarah Beaumont.

Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by an extensively illustrated volume tracing the evolution of Charlotte Posenenske’s oeuvre from early works on paper to her series of mass-produced sculptures. In doing so, the book assesses the impact of modernist ideas of utopia on her work, situating it within theories of play and performance, and examining through the lens of her later vocation as a sociologist in postwar Germany. In addition to an extensive chronology that details the full scope of her life and work, the publication includes a selection of writings by the artist.

Editors: Jessica Morgan, Alexis Lowry
Authors: Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, Liz Hirsch, Alexis Lowry, Isabelle Malz, Rita McBride, Jessica Morgan, Daniel Spaulding and Catherine Wood
Published by Dia Art Foundation
Available in English at Mudam Store and on mudamstore.com

Also on view
Leonor Antunes. joints, voids and gaps through April 5, 2021
Portrait of a Young Planet / Mudam Collection through March 21, 2021
Giulia Cenci. 2019 Baloise Art Prize / Mudam Collection through January 17, 2021


Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean opened in 2006 in a purpose-built building designed by the renowned Sino-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei and is located in the Park Draï Eechelen, overlooking the historic city of Luxembourg. Through its collection, exhibitions, artistic and educational programmes and partnerships, Mudam Luxembourg aims to advance its mission to present the most relevant contemporary art of our time to the largest possible public.