Lutz & Guggisberg
Impressions from the Interior
20/09 – 16/11/2008
Opening: Friday, 19 September 2008, 7 p.m.
Kahrstrasse 16, 45128 Essen, Germany
The Museum Folkwang, Essen presents an extensive individual exhibition of the Swiss artistic duo Lutz & Guggisberg (*1968/*1966), still generally unknown in Germany, entitled Impressions from the Interior, from 20 September to 16 November 2008. Their work oscillates between traditions and space flight and is marked by humorous melancholy and precise observations of an absurd universe. In their work, apparently banal objects and ideas take on a sublime luster. Their extravagant installations, objects, video and photographic works bear witness to the artists’ exceptional feeling for profound truths (“I saw the truth” 2005). Since they began working together in 1996, they have sorted and combined their works and in Essen, too, they are presenting an ensemble of great presence: in meditative lounges and futuristic cockpits, comfortable living rooms and cozy bedrooms, fictitious libraries and museum-like collections.
For the Museum Folkwang, the artistic duo have put together a show from different large, already existing and expansive work complexes. With their Library, the artists explore the aberrations of language, with their found objects and subtle archeology of cultural cross-over. In the video installation Wash the World (2007) irreversible natural events are undone, a roughly hewn Hut appears as refuge for what’s left of the “wild”. The video installation Man in the Snow (2005) appears almost programmatic: A figure fighting against the white of the image has neither starting nor end point; a metaphor for the eternal struggle between the space of art and the real world. The “do-it-yourself” aesthetic of their installations is also a rhetorical pointer to an unbroken belief in the power of art. The artists always work at the edge of reason and civilization. With the multi-talented Lutz & Guggisberg, the coming together of different interests and fields creates unexpected synergies, and overflowing creation in image, word and tone is transformed programmatically. The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. It will be accompanied by an artist book.
Curator: Sabine Maria Schmidt
General Visitor Information
Tel. +49(0) 201 – 88 45 301
Fax. +49 (0) 201 – 88 45 330
info@museum-folkwang.essen.de
Opening Hours: Tue-Sun 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
