Meschac Gaba: Museum of Contemporary African Art & More
Latifa Echakhch: Les sanglots longs
Until 15 November 2009
Kunsthalle Fridericianum
Friedrichsplatz 18
Kassel, Germany
Two new exhibitions at Kunsthalle Fridericianum by Meschac Gaba and Latifa Echakhch focus on global and cultural differences, forms of display and the tight connection between conceptual and installation art. With the exhibition Museum of Contemporary African Art & More Meschac Gaba is taking up aspects of African culture and display and, through the presentation in a museum, at the same time referring to a Western-oriented art world and perception. With Les sanglots longs Latifa Echakhch has created a formally rigid but very sensual installation in which she critically investigates issues around time, history and politics.
Gaba (1961) and Echakhch (1974) were both born on the African continent and are working in Europe. The two exhibitions reveal a strong conceptual artistic working method, but are on a level of perception extremely rich in their visual qualities. “While the political agenda of both artists remains half-concealed, their work clearly and emphatically shows the need to discuss global political and intercultural issues in the search for a current human condition”, writes Rein Wolfs, artistic director of the Fridericianum.
Meschac Gaba
The Museum of Contemporary African Art consists of twelve ‘museum rooms’ such as, for example, a library, a shop, a restaurant, a salon as well as a wedding room and a game room. After being presented individually worldwide as separate installations, which were created between 1997 and 2002, all rooms are now being shown together at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum. Valid and invalid banknotes, real coins, chocolate coins as well as shredded money play a key role in Gaba’s intercultural universe, symbolising values, exchange and economic reality. In addition to his ‘African Museum’ Gaba produced the work Lac de Sagesse. This piece consists of twelve gilded brains of so-called ‘grandes maîtres’, ranging from Jesus Christ to Harald Szeemann, supplemented by poster-sized banknotes with portraits of the curators who had previously exhibited the individual installations. Also on view is the work Sweetness, a 50-square-metre fictive city model made of sugar.
The exhibition was initiated by the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in cooperation with Museum De Paviljoens, Almere. An extensive catalogue will appear at the end of 2009.
Latifa Echakhch
Les sanglots longs is an exhibition extending over several rooms that Latifa Echakhch conceived for the Kunsthalle Fridericianum and which – although designed very conceptually – relies aesthetically on visual and acoustic experience. The thematic focus lies on time and its duration. A huge wall drawing spanning around 100 metres and displaying more than 300 numbers of UN resolutions referring to the Israel-Arab conflict also forms the basis for a dodecaphonic piano composition which Echakhch commissioned specifically for this exhibition. In the first room large wedges made both of foam and of concrete grouped in several island landscapes form a foil to the auditory element; the foam wedges seem to suck up the sound, whereas the concrete ones appear to stand for a frozen, endless notion of time. Thus Les sanglots longs is a monumental installation about time, history, political realities and synaesthetic experience.
Together with several partners of future exhibitions with Latifa Echakhch (GAMeC Bergamo, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Bielefelder Kunstverein, MACBA a.o.) a publication is scheduled for 2010.
Lectures in September
Wednesday 16 September, 6 p.m.
Bassam Tibi, professor of political science and international relations at Göttingen, Cornell, and Yale universities, is holding a lecture in which he will address the topic of culturally pluralistic societies as well as the cultural diversity of Islamic civilization.
Wednesday 30 September, 6 p.m.
Chris Dercon and Rein Wolfs will discuss Meschac Gaba’s art and their curatorial approach in working with Gaba’s art. Dercon is the director of Haus der Kunst in Munich and, like Rein Wolfs, has worked with Meschac Gaba before.
Preview
5 December 2009 – 14 February 2010
Carlos Amorales – Nuevos Ricos
Navid Nuur – THE VALUE OF VOID
5 March – 30 May 2010
Thomas Zipp – Mens sana in corpore sano
Press contact: +49 561 70 72 786
press@fridericianum-kassel.de
