Ludwig Forum fur Internationale Kunst presents Magicgruppe Kulturobjekt, an exhibition on view 3 March–29 April 2012. Opening: Friday, 2 March 2012, 8pm.
Ludwig Forum Aachen. Photo: Marcel Hiller.
The artist’s collective “Magicgruppe Kulturobjekt” stages materials taken from different formal and functional relationships as a spatial narrative, one that finds its own starting point in the exhibition site. The material used can be almost everything: building materials, things and forms from the urban surrounds and personal milieu of the artists, art and designer objects, plants, animals and communications media. The work emerges on site in a process of negotiation and concentration, borne by the group as a collective actor. The new adjacencies between the materials brought together generate blind spots, where the usual categories are no longer cogent and an alternative mode of seeing and experience is cultivated.
“Magicgruppe Kulturobjekt” is to be understood more as a working term than a group name. It means testing out a visual language in a collective. And it resonates with two central aspects of this work: the flexible constellation of the collective – the composition of the group changes from exhibition to exhibition—which makes the term a container for various artistic approaches, and the investigation of the construct “cultural object”. Which contexts and social conventions make a thing into a cultural object, and which aspects of culture are reproduced in it? In the work of “Magicgruppe Kulturobjekt” the scope of the concept of the cultural object is extended programmatically: things that are found, things left over, and materials are all cultural objects, artifacts inscribed with cultural meaning just like objects in art and communication.
The exhibition is divided into two sections taking place parallel in the Ludwig Forum, Aachen, and Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp. While the exhibition sections are being setup, the involved artists will switch between the two locations. As the practice of the Magicgruppe demands, the two very specific exhibition rooms are approached as found material, and so form the starting point of their artistic work. The space of the room itself is not understood as a delimiting factor, but rather as part of a scenario. In line with our self-understanding as a forum and aware of our history, the Ludwig Forum is a perfect location, providing an action field for a contemporary, temporary artistic practice, while we have consciously selected a partner displaying a similar disposition. Located in a former factory building, Extra City is an internationally-oriented platform for the production, presentation and discussion of current art positions.
Artists of “Magicgruppe Kulturobjekt” in this project: Michiel Alberts, Lara Dhondt, Michael Dobrindt, Markus Hahn, Stef Heidhues, Marcel Hiller, Suchan Kinoshita, Tamara Lorenz, Thomas Musehold, Martin Schepers, Sebastian Walther, Hans Wuyts, Markus Zimmermann and Anna Zwingl.
Curated by Anna Sophia Schultz, Ludwig Forum Aachen, in cooperation with Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen.
The exhibitions are to take place within the framework of the cooperation project “European Partnerships” run by the Goethe Institute and the Kunststiftung NRW.
Ludwig Forum fur Internationale Kunst
Jülicher Straße 97-109
52070 Aachen, Germany
www.ludwigforum.de