Pawel Althamer and children from Kassel FRÜHLING
Micol Assaël FOMUŠKA
4 April – 21 June 2009
Kunsthalle Fridericianum
Friedrichsplatz 18
Kassel, Germany
Pawel Althamer and children from Kassel, Frühling
Twelve years after his participation in documenta X, Kunsthalle Fridericianum presents the new exhibition project Frühling (Spring) by Pawel Althamer (Warsaw, 1967). For Frühling the artist invited several hundred children from Kassel to occupy over 1.000 square metres of the Fridericianum, the historically charged, world-famous exhibition site, which had been a library and a parliament building in the past. Althamer’s main aim is to enliven and transform the museum with the help of the children’s youthful, bold, and above all “unbound creativity”. The children are the project managers, the main actors, while Althamer plays the role of their guest and assistant. Drawings referring to the children’s projects are hanging on the walls and yet to discover are a giant Trojan Horse, several caves, a two-storey flat with hanging furniture, a knight’s castle, a labyrinth, a cabinet of horrors, boats, submarines …
Micol Assaël, Fomuška
In Fomuška Micol Assaël (Rome, 1979) impressively combines strength, power and accomplishment with extreme delicacy and sensitivity. The Italian artist presents a machine she developed specifically for this show beside several hundred minimalist drawings. Her artistic work is characterised by a profound fascination and passion for the laws and principles of physics, for technology and industry, for machinery and motors. The enigmatic machine electrostatically charges a vast space of the Fridericianum. Bolts of lightning are discharged in large clouds of steam. The physical perception and senses of the visitors are confronted with the immateriality of electricity as well as its mysterious force. The artist juxtaposes this experience with giant glass display cases containing 350 very tender and extremely minimalist drawings with very subtle variations. Thus, Micol Assaël not only touches the body of the visitor, but also conveys her own existence via her drawings, both mentally and physically.
Fomuška has been realised in collaboration with Secession, Vienna and Museion, Bolzano.
Energy
With the exhibitions by Althamer and Assaël the Kunsthalle follows a tradition. “Joseph Beuys’ Honey Pump at the Workplace, his Free International University and his project 7000 Oaks, as well as the still present Earth Kilometre by Walter de Maria already charged the Fridericianum energetically”, says Rein Wolfs, artistic director of the Kunsthalle. “In the new programmatic focus of the Fridericianum both Fomuška and Frühling build two very important stations in the process of trying to formulate a contemporary ‘condition humaine’.”
Preview
29 August – 15 November 2009
Meschac Gaba – Museum of Contemporary African Art & More
Latifa Echakhch – Les sanglots longs
5 December 2009 – 14 February 2010
Carlos Amorales – Nuevos Ricos
Navid Nuur – THE VALUE OF VOID
Press contact: +49 56170 72 786
press@fridericianum-kassel.de
