Ludger Gerdes: From Anxiety to Volition / Eva Kot’átková and Ketty La Rocca: Unlearning the Body

Ludger Gerdes
From Anxiety to Volition

Museum Haus Lange

With From Anxiety to Volition, the Kunstmuseen Krefeld is showing the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to Ludger Gerdes. With the beginnings of postmodernism in the late 1970s Ludger Gerdes introduced a new communicativeness to sculpture and installation art—after Minimal and Concept Art. He dealt with architecture, nature and historical aesthetic concepts (for example the English landscape garden) as well as modernism, the public space and art’s relevance for society. His art is based on architectonic quotations, metaphors, abstractions and figurations, stagings, the pictorial quality of sculpture and word acrobatics. He assembled these recurring modules into models of thought and narratives whose structures or conclusions deliberately remain open. 

Ludger Gerdes wrote art history in the early 1980s as one of the so-called Model Builders. Things grew quiet around the artist after he turned exclusively to painting in 1988. His oeuvre thus remains to be rediscovered. His playful ease in his dealings with history, the idea of the model that promises a synoptic view as well as the question concerning the societal significance of art (including art in the public space) are some of the aspects that are again relevant for our present-day culture.

The approximately 60 works on view in the Museum Haus Lange, provide a lively overview of the artist’s oeuvre. The exhibition encompasses his beginnings as an artist in the late 1970s when many aspects of his work had already taken shape as well as his major sculptures from the 1980s and the nearly unknown photographic works made after 2003.

In cooperation with the Stiftung Kunstfonds Archiv für Künstlernachlässe and the Kunsthalle zu Kiel. The accompanying catalogue book is published by the Verlag für moderne Kunst.

Curator: Sylvia Martin

Eva Kot’átková and Ketty La Rocca
Unlearning the Body

Museum Haus Esters

With Eva Kot’átková (b. 1982) and Ketty La Rocca (1938–76) the Kunstmuseen Krefeld are presenting two artists whose works enter into a multifaceted cross-generational dialogue. The focus is on the body as the carrier of physical and mental character and upbringing, as an expression of alienation and speechlessness as well as a medium for potential new forms of communication. The role of the individual in an environment defined by standards is particularly noticeable through their close artistic proximity with a view to historical as well as contemporary relevance.

Ketty La Rocca, whose work developed from the mid 1960s to her untimely death in 1976, was one of the most important exponents of Concept and Body art in Italy. The exhibition brings together a selection of her central groups of works, starting with the early collages to performances, films and photographs as well as the x-rays of her own skull that the artist superimposes with pictures of her hand and inscribes with the mantra-like repeated word “You.”

The work of the Czech sculptor Eva Kot’átková develops as a surreal, often disturbing narrative. The artist brings Haus Esters to life in the form of a stage with scenarios comprising fragmented bodies and props that ostensibly serve questionable pedagogical purposes. The history of Haus Esters resonates in the concept of the exhibition developed for Krefeld, the ground plan of which is based on traditional family structures with separate spaces for women, men and children. Symbolising pedagogical conventions as it were, Eva Kot’átková developed cage-like objects based on historical baby walkers that are both supportive and confining. Intended for use in the exhibition, the visitor can create his own experience space by means of these walking aids.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue.
Sponsored by the Stiftung Mittelsten Scheid

Curator: Magdalena Holzhey

Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–5pm

*(1) Eva Kot’átková, Me, dispersed in the room (or Room for flexible bodies) (detail), 2016. Metal, strings, textiles, variable dimensions. Courtesy the artist, Hunt Kastner, Prague; and Meyer Riegger, Berlin and Karlsruhe. Photo: Volker Döhne, Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, 2016. (2) Ketty La Rocca, Le mie parole e tu? (My Words and You ?), 1971. Drawing on photo, 50 x 60 cm. Courtesy The Ketty La Rocca Estate, Florence and Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf. (3) Ludger Gerdes, Untitled (detail), 1992. Biedermeier walnut table, Kaiser Idell table lamp, 8 plastic trees, variable dimensions. Stiftung Kunstfonds. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016. Photo: Volker Döhne, Museum Haus Lange, 2016.