Traces of Interest

With works by Heinrich Apel, Joseph Beuys & Nicolás García Uriburu, Erich Bödeker, Isaac Chong Wai, Carlfriedrich Claus, Lizza May David, Dick Higgins, Hannah Höch, Wilhelm Klotzek, Käthe Kollwitz, Joseph Kosuth, Ofri Lapid, Adrien Missika, Takako Saito, Eran Schaerf, Elisa Tan, Endre Tót, Rosemarie Trockel, Günther Uecker, Gitte Villesen, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt.

With the exhibition Traces of Interest, the ifa Gallery Stuttgart presents the 2024 instalment of its program series Out of the Box. Since 2020, the ifa Galleries in Stuttgart and Berlin have invited international contemporary artists to enter into a dialogue with art works in the ifa’s collection.

Traces of Interest is the third part of an artistic-curatorial excavation of the layers and narratives contained in the ifa’s extensive art collection, which includes circa 23,000 works of contemporary art from the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibition brings together ideas and art works issuing from a reflective process, which began in fall 2021 with artists Isaac Chong Wai, Lizza May David, Wilhelm Klotzek, Ofri Lapid, Adrien Missika, and Gitte Villesen. In the previous, two-part exhibition project, titled Spheres of Interest and Chains of Interest, the artists reflected upon the mission and context of the ifa’s collecting and exhibition practice.

Traces of Interest juxtaposes critical and humorous approaches and perspectives. It addresses issues highly relevant today and the need for collective memory as well as action.

In 1992, in the wake of the radical right-wing assaults in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, Günther Uecker developed a complex of works entitled Der geschundene Mensch (The Battered Man) for an exhibition toured globally by ifa. These works addressed the “Maltreatment of man by man.” Uecker’s stance has lost none of its impact over time, and is presented at the entrance to the exhibition in Stuttgart.

In this show, three “reclining figures” face off: a sculpture by Heinrich Apel from the collection of the ZfK, re-exhibited here for the first time in 30 years; a wooden figure by the autodidact Erich Bödeker from the exhibition Naïve Art; and a reclining figure quietly enjoying a cigarette by Wilhelm Klotzek.

Lizza May David´s performance and video is inspired by indigenous songs and myths from both sides of the Pacific Ocean, in Mexico and the Philippines. David´s work dialogues with the text and image collages of the Chinese-Filipino artist Elisa Tan.

Ofri Lapid initiated a complex chain of translations, based on Joseph Kosuth’s lexical oeuvre Titled (Art as Idea as Idea) and following the touring route of the exhibition Kunstraum Deutschland from the year 2000 on. From these translations, she developed a polyphonic performance using Kosuth’s title and over 30 voices.

Gitte Villesen’s film Strings and Berries is an homage to Hannah Höch. Taking Höch’s collage Seidenschwanz (Waxwing) as its point of departure, Villesen follows the bird into various gardens and epochs. At the same time, she brings in traditional role perceptions and references to two Afro-American feminist authors, Octavia Butler and bell hooks.

Taking the concept of the touring exhibition as his starting point, Adrien Missika founded, with MOTUS, a mobile, two-wheeled art space, which intervenes in the public space. For this project, Missika re-activated works from ifa’s touring exhibition Fluxus in Deutschland 1962-1994, including the chess sets of Takako Saito and works by Endre Tót.

Isaac Chong Wai’s affinity to the work of Käthe Kollwitz led him to her woodcut Die Mütter (The Mothers, 1922/23), which depicts a collective body marked by the experience of war. Its sculptural effect inspired Wai to develop a similarly titled performance and video in 2022. In the ruins of a cloister in Berlin, the performers, in songs of mourning, give voice to Kollwitz’s depiction of resistance and protection, while opening up a space for healing, as well.

Curated by Inka Gressel and Susanne Weiß together with Wilhelm Klotzek