Ulla von Brandenburg, Kalin Lindena, Haegue Yang: Moved by Schlemmer

Artists: Ulla von Brandenburg, Kalin Lindena, Haegue Yang, and Oskar Schlemmer

Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet premiered at the Württembergisches Landestheater in Stuttgart on September 30, 1922. Almost a century later, this extraordinary gesamtkunstwerk, which brings together visual art, dance and costume design, has lost none of its fascination. Schlemmer’s surviving original figurines, which have been in the possession of the Staatsgalerie since the 1970s, are among the highlights of the collection. Why and in what way does the Triadic Ballet still move our visitors even a hundred years after its creation? And what is Schlemmer’s relevance to contemporary art? The exhibition Moved by Schlemmer integrates the historical figurines in a presentation of large-scale installations by three contemporary artists and brings an extraordinary moment of Stuttgart’s history onto the stage of the present.

The starting point of the exhibition is Schlemmer’s concept of the Triadic Ballet as an embodiment of the principle of the trinity. Three acts conveying three different moods, building up from the cheerful and burlesque to the festive and solemn and, finally, to the mystical and fantastic. Ulla von Brandenburg, Kalin Lindena and Haegue Yang each react to one mood and challenge Schlemmer’s thoughts and decisions with their own artistic questions. A look at the history of the work’s reception shows that its influence extends far beyond the art world, resurfacing, for example in music and fashion. But it also shows what critical questions Schlemmer’s work provokes today, one hundred years after its creation.