Exhibition Program 2012
Teerhof 21
28199 Bremen
Germany
T +49 421 500 897
F +49 421 593 337
presse [at] gak-bremen.de
Tue–Sun 11–18 h, Thu 11–21 h
Cathy Wilkes
Through 19 February 2012
Mariechen Danz
10 March–3 June 2012
Beyond Words
Saâdane Afif, Jesse Ash, Nina Beier & Marie Lund & Francesco Pedraglio, Kajsa Dahlberg, Jacob Dahl Jürgensen, Dani Gal/Achim Lengerer, Ryan Gander, Alexander Gutke, Kitty Kraus, Karolin Meunier, Albrecht Schäfer, Norbert Schwontkowski, Kathrin Sonntag, Mark Wallinger, Lawrence Weiner
23 June–9 September 2012
Vlassis Caniaris
29 September 2012–6 January 2013
Until February 19, 2012 GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst presents the first major institutional solo-exhibition of works by Cathy Wilkes (*1966 in Belfast, lives in Glasgow) staged outside the UK in cooperation with the Kunstverein Munich. The exhibition features specially commissioned installations as well as selections of previously unseen archive material. In Bremen, Wilkes’ installations are accompanied by her paintings. The predominantly abstract canvases stand in stark contrast to her large-scale, floor-bound installations, and offer a more nuanced insight into the thinking of this multifaceted artist.
“How to know?” sings German-Irish artist Mariechen Danz (*1980 in Dublin, currently living in Berlin) in one of her performances. This is a question which turns out to be central to her entire artistic practice. Knowledge in all its myriad facets—its production, history, communication, and the concomitant hierarchies, as well as questions of objectivity and models and systems of knowledge—form the core of her work. Danz’ work extends across the disciplines of drawing, installation, photography, performance and music. The human body, as the foundation for the formation and appropriation of knowledge, is an important point of reference in her work. In cooperation with the Kunstverein Göttingen, the GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst in Bremen presents the first institutional solo-exhibition of work by Mariechen Danz to unite her various fields of practice. With her band UNMAP she will give a concert and stage a new performance in Bremen in the accompanying program of the show.
The international group exhibition Beyond Words presents contemporary artistic positions that are devoted in different ways to the interaction between words and visual appearance: positions that delve into the visual qualities of words and/or the descriptive elements (as they relate to the world) that open up behind appearance. Positions, too, that highlight the discrepancy which might emerge between the two areas, the visible and that which is said/written, and touch the world „beyond words“. The exhibition, curated by Janneke de Vries and Yvonne Bialek, will be accompanied by various performances, lectures and film screenings.
Vlassis Caniaris (1928–2011) is frequently viewed as an “artist’s artist” – while his work is known and appraised among international artists, he has been almost forgotten by the wider art world after major international exhibitions between the 1960s and 1990s. Caniaris’ visual language is distinctive and surprising for its period. His unique treatment of forms and materials, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, his paintings, objects and installations has influenced artists up to the present day. Following his death in 2011, the GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst is to stage the first solo-exhibition of works by this remarkable artist outside Greece since 1992, initiating a long overdue process of rediscovery and tracing the development of Caniaris’ oeuvre across his career.
