The Düsseldorf-based artist Leni Hoffmann has created a site-specific ex-hibition that dialogues with the architecture and the collection of Cologne's Ludwig Museum in a refreshing new manner. This radical show fundamentally challenges the collection-based institution through ephemeral on and off-site projects that evolve over time and question the autonomy of art.
Few movements have influenced the course of modern and contemporary art as deeply as Suprematism and Constructivism. Like her predecessors El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko, Leni Hoffmann (born 1962) in turn questions the autonomy of art and in particular painting through site specific, "user-friendly" installations that, like Proun, extend painting into architectural space and everyday life. Hoffmann's exhibi-tion renders homage to the Museum Ludwig's exceptional collection of Russian Avantgarde art, which is currently highlighted in a separate six-part exhibition series.
Both this project series and the Hoffmann exhibition are curated by Katia Baudin, Deputy Director of the Ludwig Museum.
In accordance with her "nomadic" approach, Leni Hoffmann has selected five very different and totally unexpected locations for her work that underscore architectural discrepancies or particularities of the museum inaugurated in 1986 and designed by the Cologne-based Architects Busmann & Haberer. A visit through the exhibition is simultaneously a visit through the entire museum, a treasure hunt that takes the visi-tor from the entrance hall to the roof terrace, while encountering works in a hallway and in a permanent collection room. These colorful, geometrical paintings that extend vertically and horizontally into space – from windows and walls to the floor and the ceiling – unite two materials of contradictory nature, durable concrete and malleable plasticine. The viewer is invited to become a transitory part of many of these installa-tions, by leaving his footprints on the clay and sitting on the cushion-covered con-crete extensions.
The exhibition reaches directly beyond museum walls, with a temporary outdoor seat-ing sculpture in the midst of a major construction site neighboring the museum, which encourages the spectator/user to enter into a new dialogue with this transitional envi-ronment.
The most radical work of the exhibition is still to come: "pizzicato", in which she will create on an unannounced day, a unique work for Cologne's leading local newspa-per, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, directly inspired by the offset printing process. This work – which will last one day –, will enable everyone who purchases the newspaper that day to own a unique work of art, as no two editions will be exactly the same.
Few movements have influenced the course of modern and contemporary art as deeply as Suprematism and Constructivism. Like her predecessors El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko, Leni Hoffmann (born 1962) in turn questions the autonomy of art and in particular painting through site specific, "user-friendly" installations that, like Proun, extend painting into architectural space and everyday life. Hoffmann's exhibi-tion renders homage to the Museum Ludwig's exceptional collection of Russian Avantgarde art, which is currently highlighted in a separate six-part exhibition series.
Both this project series and the Hoffmann exhibition are curated by Katia Baudin, Deputy Director of the Ludwig Museum.
In accordance with her "nomadic" approach, Leni Hoffmann has selected five very different and totally unexpected locations for her work that underscore architectural discrepancies or particularities of the museum inaugurated in 1986 and designed by the Cologne-based Architects Busmann & Haberer. A visit through the exhibition is simultaneously a visit through the entire museum, a treasure hunt that takes the visi-tor from the entrance hall to the roof terrace, while encountering works in a hallway and in a permanent collection room. These colorful, geometrical paintings that extend vertically and horizontally into space – from windows and walls to the floor and the ceiling – unite two materials of contradictory nature, durable concrete and malleable plasticine. The viewer is invited to become a transitory part of many of these installa-tions, by leaving his footprints on the clay and sitting on the cushion-covered con-crete extensions.
The exhibition reaches directly beyond museum walls, with a temporary outdoor seat-ing sculpture in the midst of a major construction site neighboring the museum, which encourages the spectator/user to enter into a new dialogue with this transitional envi-ronment.
The most radical work of the exhibition is still to come: "pizzicato", in which she will create on an unannounced day, a unique work for Cologne's leading local newspa-per, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, directly inspired by the offset printing process. This work – which will last one day –, will enable everyone who purchases the newspaper that day to own a unique work of art, as no two editions will be exactly the same.
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