Kunstverein Hamburg presents Olaf Metzel Gegenwartsgesellschaft (Contemporary Society) an exhibition on view until January 5, 2014.
The show brings visitors face to face with a collection of carefully selected pieces, which examine German themes and various aspects of German history. Metzel himself describes his works as “three-dimensional images, tenses.” He succeeds in giving shape to time, while never losing sight of the historical context. “We are forgetting where we are and who we were. Metzel’s works open our eyes to today’s world and awaken a need to communally view, experience and read in the present day all that has been forgotten or suppressed of this land and its history,” reads Felix Ensslin’s entry in the exhibition catalog. Thus seen, the “three-dimensional tense” is the present itself and Metzel is, in the most literal sense of the word, a contemporary artist, despite his preoccupation with the more negative aspects of present-day society. He could be aptly described as an “anti-contemporary artist,” someone who rubs salt into the open wounds of society, such as racism, terrorism, state violence, destructive recreational habits and the role that mass media plays in society. The exhibition at the Kunstverein is for this reason not a retrospective, but rather an installative route through German themes and preoccupations, which today remain as relevant as ever. The exhibition presents early works like Roter Beton (1981), Wurfeisen und Zwille (Entwurf Hafenstraße,1990/91) or Im Grünen (1992) as well as new works like NSU (2013). The most recent work, Sozialtapete, is however, utterly unique to its place of installation and has in fact been incorporated into the wall itself. After the exhibition ends, it will be removed and no longer exist in the same form.
Der Kunstverein, since 1817.
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20095 Hamburg
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