Susanne Gaensheimer – författare

Desire, eroticism, playing with gender – these qualities in the works of queer artists are not regarded here as external to the creative process, but rather as foundational. By approaching the art through a perspective of queer aesthetics, the aim is to discover the visual worlds of hitherto little-known figures of international Modernism, from Eastern and Western Europe and from North and South America. Experimenting with alternative lifestyles is reflected in new visual languages, perspectives, and a different aesthetic. “Modern utopias of abolishing the gender binary,” “Queer avant-gardes” and “The potential in queer readings of abstraction” are only some of the compelling topics presented in this volume, which also recounts the history of queer lives during war, persecution, and resistance. Artists: Natalie Clifford Barney, Richmond Barthé, Rosa Bonheur, Romaine Brooks, Til Brugman, Paul Cadmus, Claude Cahun, Heinrich Campendonk, Jean Cocteau, Ithell Colquhoun, Nils Dardel, Beauford Delaney, Leonor Fini, Gluck, Hannah Hoch, Ludwig von Hofmann, Valentine Hugo, Robin Ironside, Lotte Laserstein, Marie Laurencin, George Platt Lynes, Maria Martins, Marcel Moore, Marlow Moss, Ismael Nery, Richard Bruce Nugent, Meret Oppenheim, Milena Pavlovic-Barili, Glyn Warren Philpot, Gregorio Prieto, Anton Prinner, Sonja Sekula, Florine Stettheimer, Pavel Tchelitchew, Toyen, Paule Vezeley, Ethel Walker, Nicolaas Warb, Gerda Wegener, Irene Zurkinden.

In thirteen chapters, the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue offer profound insight into the cosmopolitan thinking of Joseph Beuys, as manifested in his actions, which are presented in the form of video projections and photographs. For it is in this capacity—as an acting, speaking, and moving figure—that Beuys examined the central, radical idea of his expanded concept of art: "Every human being is an artist." The goal of his universalist approach was to renew society from the ground up. To this day, his influence can be felt in artistic and political discourses. In this exhibition, contemporary artists and representatives from various areas of society enter into a multilayered, transcultural dialogue with Beuys. From today’s perspective, they confirm, question, and expand upon his theses about the possibilities of a future conceived via art.With B-Town Warriors, Phyllida Barlow, Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stepanian, Fatou Bensouda, Huma Bhabha, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Angela Davis, Dusadee Huntrakul, Charles Foster, Nuria Güell, Donna Haraway, Raphael Hillebrand, Jenny Holzer, Michel Houellebecq, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Zoe Leonard, Goshka Macuga, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Milk Tea Alliance, William Pope.L, Tejal Shah, Vandana Shiva, Santiago Sierra, Patti Smith, Edward Snowdon, Christopher D. Stone, Suzanne Lacy, The Otolith Group, Thich Nhat Hanh, Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai

As one of the key figures of Brazil’s Neo-Concrete movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lygia Pape developed a specific understanding of geometric abstraction that resulted in a radical new conception of concrete-constructivist art, challenging an overly rigid rationalism by moving toward more subjective, multi-sensorial modes of expression. Marking Pape’s first solo exhibition in Germany, this richly illustrated book presents the artist’s unusual creative power in all its breadth, drawing on a body of documents that is being published for the first time.Against the backdrop of the tension between Brazil’s vibrant avant-garde and the growing political repression through the military dictatorship (1964–1985), Pape’s work reflects ethical and socio-political issues and harnesses experimental explorations of not just metaphorical geometric but social space to create poetic manifestations of subtle resistance. Emphasizing the primacy of the sensorial experience of the viewers, Pape went as far as to declare them to be the actual creators of her works.

Piet Mondrian had a decisive influence on the development of painting from figuration to abstraction. On the occasion of his 150th birthday, Mondrian Evolution is dedicated to his multifaceted work and artistic development. Initially working in the tradition of Dutch landscape painting of the late 19th century, Symbolism and Cubism subsequently took on great significance for him. It was not until the early 1920s that the artist focused on a wholly non-representational pictorial vocabulary, limited to the rectangular arrangement of black lines with surfaces in white and the primary colors blue, red and yellow. In separate chapters, this path is traced through motifs such as windmills, dunes, and the sea, farms reflected in the water, and plants in various forms of abstraction.

Visualizing Hidden Structures in Art and Society In her artistic practice, Andrea Buttner combines art history with social and ethical issues. Since the early 2000s, she has been exploring a wide range of themes such as work, poverty, shame and care in monastic forms of coexistence, but also arts and crafts as a political field. Examining the ambivalent tension between aesthetics and ethics, the internationally renowned artist uses various conceptual methods. Best known for her large-scale woodcuts, Buttner has since used a variety of media, including etching, painting, photography and video installations, glass art and textiles. For her publications and exhibitions, Buttner composes her works thematically to create site-specific installations that can be experienced as gradually unfolding narratives.

An insatiable Hunger for Life Clenched, raw and of a pressing urgentness: Chaïm Soutine’s expressive paintings are testimonies to a sense of human vulnerability and an existence on the margins of society. Intensely coloured, his meaty impasto portraits are thrown onto the canvas with broad brushstrokes, his agitated, frenetic landscapes and the paintings of slaughtered animals are expressions of an intense hunger for life and, at the same time, a deep alienation in an unsteady world that offers no support. Despite the recognition his work received, Soutine remained an outsider throughout his life, a stranger to the social manners of his adopted home in France. This catalogue focuses on the early masterpieces and series created between 1919 and 1925: Under the overarching theme of emigration and uprooting, the contributions reveal the traces of Soutine’s Jewish origins in his work, illuminate the significance of his motifs from the fringes of society as well as of blood and animal carcasses as metaphors; and show the influences of Soutine’s art up to the present day.

The artist Cao Fei (* 1978) lives in Beijing. In her work she makes use of the latest digital media. Her projects lie on the threshold between reality and fiction and reflect the societal and urban situation in China. The videos, photographs, drawings and multimedia installations represent her entire artistic oeuvre.In her works, which vary between the aesthetics of documentary, film and virtual reality, Cao Fei reflects the reality of life in China and the constant fundamental changes. In doing so she also draws on her personal surroundings in Beijing. As an artist she addresses questions which are universally valid: where is the development in big cities leading? What is my place within urban society? Am I a critical observer of gentrification processes and at the same time a part of the problem?

Using collage and montage as a medium and always in connection with his own biography, Marcel Odenbach investigates politically and culturally relevant topics of his time, such as for example the process of coming to terms with Nazi crimes, remembrance culture, the effects and after-effects of European colonialism in Africa, racism and time and time again the relationship between the individual and society.The artist Marcel Odenbach (*1953) lives in Cologne, Berlin and intermittently in Ghana. Since 1976 he has worked with video. His filmic collages and installations have contributed to the fact that today video art is a central medium in contemporary international art. Parallel to this he has created a wide-ranging graphic oeuvre. In the joint consideration of his video and paper works it becomes clear that Odenbach regards art and culture under a socio-political perspective and at the same time relies on the strength of the sensuous-aesthetical experience of images.

The long-awaited work monograph on the biennial and documenta artist Reinhard Mucha. … For me, things only become interesting when they contain some mysterious corner somewhere which continues to elude us. And so I am really rather sorry that Mucha was not included, because he is formally incredibly good and is nonetheless twice or three times as unfathomable. - Harald Szeemann, “Zeitinvestition zu knapp”, in: Kunstforum International, vol. 90, July–September 1987 The Düsseldorf artist Reinhard Mucha (b. 1950) exhibited his work at the Biennale in Venice in 1990 and at the documenta in Kassel in 1997. His work is regarded as one of the most important positions in contemporary art for his redefinition of sculpture, photography and installations. The catalogue accompanying the artist’s exhibition unites installations which have not been seen for many years with works from all creative phases, thereby sketching a panorama extending over forty years of artistic work. The overview volume was created in close cooperation with the artist.