KRISTINA LEKO and ANDREAS FISCHER

To a large degree, the socially weak or precarious residential areas lack beauty, social potential and, likewise, identity. The Bonner Kunstverein is located in just such an area.

'HAPPY HOUSE OF JUSTICE AND LOVE' is the title of a participatory art and communication project that the Croatian artist KRISTINA LEKO (*1966 in Zagreb, lives and works in Cologne and Zagreb) has developed for the Bonner Kunstverein with the residents of this neighborhood. In collaboration with the Blumenhof, the Evangelical Migration and Refugee Work in Bonn, the Caritas Institution "Uns Huus" (youth center), "Marienhaus" (seniors and nursing home) and Prälat-Schleich-Haus" (home for the homeless),

LEKO has worked out the participants' experiences, ways of seeing things, and needs, concerning architectural issues and community living. The results will be presented in a large-scale mural in the forecourt of the Kunstverein as well as in documentary exhibitions at the Kunstverein and in the participating institutions. The aim is to integrate and link the project's individual participants, but also art's public space and the neighborhood. Under consideration are the beauty and the social responsibility of architecture and residency, as well as the integrative promotion and sensitization for a cultural participation of all of society.

Starting with an obligation of the artist within a larger socio-political constellation, LEKO, for instance, links the project to exhibitions like the Artist Placement Group (APG) in the 1970s. Within the exhibition's supporting program, there will be a critical classification of the project within the context of recent developments in contemporary art.

The Düsseldorf sculptor, ANDREAS FISCHER (*1972 IN MUNICH, 1997-2002 in Georg Herold's master class) constructs kinetic objects, machines and apparatuses. His source material mostly consists of disassembled and newly arranged technical devices (entertainment electronics or household appliances) that have been sorted out of current usage and now, combined with similar "poor" and simple wire or wooden constructions, are reborn into a new functionality. The relics, revitalized by meticulous craftsmanship, are never satisfied with the aesthetics of movements and sounds in themselves but, as works, transmit thematic contents: as mechanical "readable" actions, often enough in text form, via sound recordings of text fragments, but also in the form of banners and neon signs. But it is often the viewer's substantial emotions and expectations that FISCHER takes as his initial consideration, such as a small tent whose opening is turned away from the public and awakes curiosity, only to snap shut when approached (Tente Jalouse, 2003). Fischer's machines represent a contemporary and critical occupation with sculpture and at the same time reaffirms the artist's faith in the utopian and poetic potency of art.

The exhibition is the first institutional solo show of the artist, who has participated in numerous prominent group exhibitions and is represented in renowned contemporary collections (such as Museum Ludwig, Cologne).