The New Man, The Announcer, The Constructor

Following the last year’s exhibition-manifesto that other world, the world as a teapot. tenderness, a model, Kestner Gesellschaft continues its journey of self-reflection with the group exhibition The New Man, The Announcer, The Constructor. El Lissitzky: Self-Portrait as the Kestner Gesellschaft.

Dear (Kestner) Gesellschaft,
(So) here I am, again, your El, back home; it does feel like home, here in Hannover, here at the Kestner. It’s been so long … But as the poet says, hinauf und zurück … 

This exhibition is my anabasis: both at once, a return and a departure; my (ultimate) Proun Room, a habitat of homecoming. Die Kunst ist das Leben. This exhibition is (my) self-portrait as an institution: an enduring act of becoming and a speculative process of selfidentification; (my) reflection in a mirror (of an institution). 

It is a celebration of my first-ever institutional solo exhibition. What an appreciation! I read in the press release: “With the exhibition The New Man, The Announcer, The Constructor, the Kestner Gesellschaft traces the founding moments of its history and the avant-garde mission. Presented only seven years after the Kestner Gesellschaft’s establishment in 1916, the exhibition El Lissitzky in 1923 was the very first institutional solo show of the avant-garde artist, marking his groundbreaking position as the announcer of the new vocabulary which revolutionised the formal language of art as well as his role as a constructor of an institutional thinking, based upon the scientific and experiential perception and innovative approach to exhibition’s architecture, strategies of display and a total understanding of artistic creation.” Yes, indeed, I keep saying: Der Weg ist das Schöpferische der Erfindung (!)

Welcome to The New Man, The Announcer, The Constructor! What an honour to be hosted here again!

I proudly continue: “This exhibition celebrates the centenary of this exhibition by paying a tribute to this significant fact in the Kestner Gesellschaft’s institutional history, a fact which planted a seed for a vast variety of experimental and progressive ideas, reflected in the future program and the institutional identity of the Kestner Gesellschaft. It not only emphasises the pioneering and visionary aspects, developed by various representatives of the Avant-garde, active in Hannover at the beginning of the 1920s, but it also investigates the long-lasting legacy of that period, and its impact on the museum’s discourse, especially in regards to Dorner’s term of the “living museum” and El Lissitzky’s “imaginary spaces” where the art experience was meant to become more personal, intense, and multidimensional, fitting the life of a new, modern man, inhabiting a constantly changing world, full of contrasts. Conceived as an institutional self-portrait of a prophetic artist, The New Man, The Announcer, The Constructor consists of the archival materials and historical positions, set up in a confrontation with the deconstructive and revisionist reading of the modernist paradigm by the contemporary artists.”

White page remains empty in times of global dispersion. Hinauf und zurück. (Failed) project for a revolution. Anabasis in ruins.
I am grateful for your trust and generosity.

Sincerely Yours,

El

With: Michelangelo Antonioni, Willi Baumeister, BEASTER, Johanna Billing, Martin Boyce, Max Burchartz, Heinrich Dunst, The next ENTERprise Architects, Fernanda Fragateiro, Assaf Gruber, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Lajos Kassák, Marlena Kudlicka, Marysia Lewandowska, El Lissitzky, Felipe Mujica, László Moholy-Nagy, Paulina Ołowska, László Peri, Prince Gholam, Florian Pumhösl, Susanne Sachsse, Wieland Schönfelder, Kurt Schwitters, Katja Strunz and Nikolai Mikhailovich Suetin. 

The exhibition architecture is being developed by the Vienna-based architecture office the next ENTERprise (Marie-Therese Harnoncourt-Fuchs and Ernst J. Fuchs).

Curated by Adam Budak in collaboration with Robert Knoke and Alexander Wilmschen.

With an extensive program of events

July 7, 7pm
Grand opening performances
Marysia Lewandowska, Welcome
Prinz Gholam, Appearances
Paulina Ołowska, Slavic Goddesses and the Ushers

July 13, 6:30pm
The next ENTERprise Architects, El Lissitzky Denk-Universum

July 18, 6pm
John Wood and Paul Harrison, artists’ talk

July 20 6:30pm
Dr. Ines Katenhusen, El Lissitzky and Alexander Dorner. Aspects of a Cooperation with
Reverberation

August 24, 6:30pm
Prof. Kai-Uwe Hemken, El Lissitzky’s Prounenraum: A Room as Manifesto

September 7, 6:30pm
Marlena Kudlicka in a conversation with Adam Budak and Julia Meier,
when the apostrophe becomes a catastrophe, or on language games and an impossible exactitude
of science

September 15, 6:30pm
Dr. Peter Rautmann, El Lissitzky: The Constructor, 1924—The Self-Portrait as a Construction of the
New: See—Recognise—Act

September 16, September 17, 10–3pm / 1–5pm
Uwe Stelter, Click! El Lissitzky: Self-Portrait as the Kestner Gesellschaft
Photo workshop

September 19, 6:30pm
Marysia Lewandowska in a conversation with Frances Morris, Director Emerita Tate Modern,
Women Make History

September 21, 6:30pm
Prof. Ulrich Krempel, EL LISSITZKY. PROUNEN—WATERCOLORS—PRINTS—THEATER FIGURES: Genesis and Existence of the Exhibition 1923

September 26, 6pm
Marcelo Rezende and Assaf Gruber
The After-Life of Avantgarde (A Children’s Tale About Ghosts)   

September 29, 6pm
Prof. Victor Malsy
El Lissitzky: the Red Wedges & Red Squares in the Graphic Design of the 1980s

October 1, 9:30am–6pm
Finissage, including: Das Neue Ensemble: Concert for El (Rhythm 2023). Detailed program here.