Kiki Kogelnik
I Have Seen the Future
September 15–December 30, 2012
Manuel Graf
Ils sont fous ces Romains!
September 15–December 2, 2012
Der Kunstverein, since 1817.
Klosterwall 23
20095 Hamburg
The solo show on Kunstverein Hamburg’s upper floor marks the first extensive appraisal of the oeuvre of Austrian artist Kiki Kogelnik (1935–1997) in Germany. The exhibition continues Kunstverein’s series of enquiries into positions of feminist art at the time and in circles associated with Pop Art, which began in 2011 with the solo show on Evelyne Axell (1935–1972). As a contemporary art institution, the Kunstverein’s mission is not only to present young art but also to place present-day artistic output in a historical context. The majority of the almost 90 exhibited works presented in the exhibition can be considered “Pop-related works,” whereby the exhibition focuses on the 1960s and thus on a relatively short but intense period in Kiki Kogelnik’s oeuvre. The pictorial worlds on canvas or paper are strongly influenced by Pop Art, though she in fact developed her own subjects and visual vocabulary, which she then pursued for a further 30 years and realized using different media. Kogelnik relocated to New York in the early 1960s and her personal acquaintance with countless Pop artists and her familiarity with the social debates of the day form the backdrop to her artistic effort. Our focus on this timeframe helps to structure the different currents in her work as well as highlighting central stylistic features and emphatic and expressive artistic forms. It was not only topics of the day that found their way into her works, but also materials taken from the consumer world. She swiftly replaced the gestural expression of painting with the slogan “art comes from artificial.” She used strident, luminescent neon colors; her themes were frequently built on colored grids of dots in line with the Benday dots encountered in Pop Art; she applied the paint very evenly, using spray cans for example, and often relied on vinyl or other plastic foils. Her works on canvas increasingly morphed into assemblages that protruded well beyond the borders of the image and featured combinations of different materials.
Manuel Graf (*1978, lives in Düsseldorf), who studied sculpture at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, has consistently refused to confine himself to any limitations or pigeonholing in his work. Architecture is a frequently reoccurring theme in his art—not from a practical design perspective, but rather in the way he expresses an interest in examining and experiencing objects. His current project explores the idea that there are three basic types of architectural arrangement. The first type is a longitudinal arrangement along the length of the building, the second is focused around a central point, and the third is decentralized architecture, where the central point is rendered insignificant. The first two types have been relatively widespread since antiquity, particularly in religious buildings, but the third has primarily been characterized by one specific example: the four-iwan mosque. Taking the particular architectural form of the four-iwan mosque as his starting point, and using the Imam Mosque in Isfahan as an example, Graf is currently channelling his years of research into this type of construction into a film project that will be presented in the context of the exhibition on the ground floor of the Kunstverein.
The Kunstverein is funded by Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg – Ministry of Culture. The exhibition of Kiki Kogelnik is supported by Kiki Kogelnik Foundation Vienna/New York. The exhibition of Manuel Graf is funded by Kunststiftung NRW (Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia).
*Image above:
Kiki Kogelnik, I Have Seen the Future, 2012. Installation view Kunstverein Hamburg. Photo: Fred Dott / Kunstverein Hamburg. © Kiki Kogelnik Foundation Vienna/New York.
