Kunstverein Freiburg | English Version
Translation: George Frederick Takis
The Kunstverein e.V. was established in 1827 and thus numbers among the oldest Kunstvereine
(art associations) in Germany.
The history of its programs during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reads like a
“Who’s Who” of classic modernism, and since 1950 the Kunstverein Freiburg has developed
into an institution, esteemed both nationally and internationally, which focuses exclusively on
current tendencies in contemporary art.
In 1997 the Kunstverein moved to the Marienbad, centrally located at Dreisamstrasse 21.
Formerly a swimming pool, the building was altered and renovated in accordance with the
new requirements; today it offers an extensive exhibition hall with a height of 9 meters and a
surface area of around 400 square meters. The hall is surrounded by a gallery which not only
provides further space for projects and exhibitions, but also offers the unusual opportunity of
viewing all exhibitions in the hall from above.
Located at the gallery level is our reference library, with important publications dating
predominantly from the nineteen-sixties onwards. For personnel reasons, it does not have
regular opening times, but upon consultation with us, it may be used as an instrument for
research.
Themes
The Kunstverein Freiburg e.V. focuses on fundamental questions concerning the production,presentation, communication and preconditions of contemporary art.
Today art and culture emerge against a background which is characterized above all by an
attentive and deliberate observation of social and political themes, along with the multifaceted
forms of their treatment and appearance.
The borders between individual disciplines such as art, fashion, design, music or theater often
appear to be blurred; the interfaces offer hybrid zones as well as unexpected perspectives, and
they generate new catchwords and projection surfaces.
We are mainly interested in artists who in various ways stand in a clear and thereby binding
relationship to their era, and who work within a social-cultural context upon which they also
reflect personally.
Communication
In individual and group exhibitions, collaborations and projects, through free guided tours,lectures, music programs, actions and discussions (e.g. the discussion with the artist on the
Saturday after the exhibition opening), we devote ourselves intensively to the communication
of art, and we also aim systematically at a young public. Hence we seek contact to schools,
colleges, academies and universities, and we organize specifically prepared encounters
between young persons and contemporary art.
The intention here is to clarify again and again the various orientation-models and options
which art offers for finding one’s way individually in a world which appears to be more and
more complex.
We hope that the Kunstverein Freiburg e.V. will serve as the lively and vital site for a profound
discourse about contents. Deserving of mention here is the bar “derdrittedonnerstag,” (“the
third thursday”), which is intended to be a social meeting-place and platform for artists and artlovers
in and around Freiburg. We would like to offer various possibilities for experiencing and
understanding current artistic positions, as well as for viewing art as an important platform for
a life characterized by curiosity, attentiveness and tolerance.
Current Exhibition
ohne Titel (Rorschach), 2010
© Alexander Laner
Foto: Marc Doradzillo
ALEXANDER LANER
Beneath our skies | January 22– March 14, 2010
Opening:
Friday January 22, 7 pm
Program Preview 2010
Program Archive 2009
„x-times myspace“ | Koreografenkollektiv k² | First Night January 14, 2010, 8 pm
x-times , myspace | k2
Following sessions: January 15 and 17, 2010, 8 pm
Regionale 10
November 27, 2009 – January 3, 2010
Artists of the region. In cooperation with different other art institutes.
Special theme: Performance
Seven galleries in the Kunstverein Freiburg
Opening: Thursday 17th November 2009 , 7 pm
Anna Molska + Wojtek Bakowski
Abb.: Anna Molska / Wojtek Bakowski, Completed, 2009 (Still)
Video, 15’21'', Farbe, Ton © Anna Molska / Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw
COMPLETED
September 18 - November 8, 2009
The movie was produced by
Zachęta National Gallery of Art,
Deutsche Bank Polska S.A. and Deutsche Bank Foundation.
Nothing to say and I am saying it
March 27 – May 24, 2009
Group exhibition with Markus Amm (D), Karla Black (GB), Marieta Chirulescu (R), Ned Vena
(USA), Cerith Wyn Evans (GB), Andrew Dadson (CA), Sergej Jensen (DK)
John Cage’s famous statement provides the title for this group exhibition in which painting
assumes a central position. The exhibition presents mainly monochromatic works which are
characterized by the same contradiction that marks the quotation from Cage: Predominantly
empty color surfaces possess potential contents which seem to be absent or concealed, so that
something which is supposedly negative can give rise to a constructive aspect.
The reference to Minimalism is clearly recognizable in those works whose color material is
especially emphasized. At the same time, the deep spatial illusion consistently alludes to the
intention of depicting something. The exhibition of mainly young artists includes painting,
sculpture and film.
Anthea Hamilton
January 23 – March 15, 2009
Anthea Hamilton (* 1978) uses a wide range of sources in a self-evident manner. Among these
are art-historical references, trivial everyday happenings, historical icons, and carriers of
autobiographical significance. She creates environments which reproduce contexts familiar to
us: gymnasiums, television studios, indoor swimming pools—sites in which special clothing
and trained sequences of movements are the rule. For the Kunstverein Freiburg, Anthea
Hamilton has developed with “Gymnasium” a spatially encompassing installation whose
elements invite active involvement. By means of equipment, mobiles, barriers and wallpaintings,
the visitors are conducted through the three-dimensional picture not only visually,
but also physically.
Program Archive 2008
Regionale 9
November 28, 2008 – January 4, 2009
Every year at Christmas, the Kunstverein Freiburg displays, as a highlight of regional artistic
creation, various works by artists from the border triangle between Germany, France and
Switzerland. This frontier-transcending impetus offers regional artists of all ages the possibility
of exhibiting their works at fourteen art institutions in Basel, southern Baden and Alsace. More
than 250 works were selected in 2007 by professional juries from the 600 submitted
applications. The Regionale is thus not only a mirror for the creative potential of the region and
its cultural diversity, but also a platform for an exchange between the creators of art, cultural
institutions, and a public interested in art.
Federico Herrero
September 12 – November 9, 2008
The powerful, large-format paintings of the Costa Rican Federico Herrero (*1978) usher into
view the spaces between things. Although the small, monochromatically painted blocks
nestled against each other appear to be abstract, they nonetheless represent Herrero’s
reactions to circumstances and images which he encounters in his everyday life in Costa Rica
or during his travels. Serving as his source of inspiration are the diverse street- and housepaintings
in Costa Rica, which are not defined as art but present themselves to us as various
types of pictorial communication.
Ergin Cavusoglu
June 6 – August 10, 2008
“Place after Place”
Ergin Cavusoglu (*1968) is currently considered to be one of the most interesting video artists
in Great Britain. His video installations reflect the complex and incessantly changing migration
of people between places and countries. Often filmed in harbors, airports or marketplaces, his
videos treat the themes of the journey and the process of movement which determines our
reality. In this way they tell in a lyrical manner of the personal experiences of individuals within
a widespread collective history.
Diana Dodson and Reto Leibundgut
April 4 – May 25, 2008
Diana Dodson (*1963) and Reto Leibundgut (*1966) often work together. For the Kunstverein
Freiburg they have prepared a group of new works as their first exhibition in a public space in
Germany. In their installations, objects, pictures and videos, the artists thematize the world of
dwellings by combining in a new way such furnishings as rugs, wall paneling or leather sofas,
and by imbuing them with an unexpected significance. The other central theme of their work
is an investigation of natural elements. Here the idyll of landscape representation functions,
not as a mirror of nature, but as a reflection of social and communal phenomena, as a
projection surface for human emotions.
Laurent Montaron
January 25 – March 16, 2008
Although the Frenchman Laurent Montaron (*1972) is known in his home country as one of
the most interesting young artists, this presentation is his first solo exhibition in Germany. He
has conceived a new film for the hall of the Kunstverein Freiburg and is displaying large-format
photographic works on the upper level. His works have to do with various forms of narration,
the border between reality and its representation, and the possibilities of communicating
experiences of time to us. At a great distance from both documentary and fictional aspects,
Laurent Montaron utilizes the strategies of isolation, allusion and concealment in order to lay
open the hidden energies in the generation of meaning, to reveal the magic of images and
sounds.
Program Archive 2007
Regionale 8
November 30, 2007 – January 6, 2008
In the framework of the 2007 Regionale 8, the Kunstverein Freiburg is presenting 31 artists
from Germany, Switzerland and France:
Sabine Bechtel / Beat Brüderlin / Buess/Weber / Gabriela de Antuñano / Max Diel / Lena
Eriksson / Carola Faller / Barbara Feuz / Hans-Rudolf Fitze / Matthias Frey / Eva Früh / Anja
Ganster / Stefanie Gerhardt / Salome Ghazanfari / Regina Hügli / Rahel Knöll / Reinhard Kühl /
Marie-Louise Leus / Andreas Lorenschat / Christophe Marguier / Ji-Sook Min / Chris Popovic /
Almut Quaas / Emanuel Rossetti / Monika Ruckstuhl / Brigit Rufer / Schär&Spillmann / Bruno
Steiner / Anna Stiller / Andrzej Wolski / Daniela Zanolla.
The exhibition deliberately aims at a variety of established and less well-known regional
positions of the border triangle between Germany, France and Switzerland in a mixture of
painting, drawing, photography, video and sculpture.
Susanne Kühn: Paintings
September 14 – November 11, 2007
The exhibition of Susanne Kühn (*1969), an artist living in Freiburg, is the first comprehensive
presentation of her work at a public institution. It completes the return of the artist to her
home country after she lived and worked in the USA for seven years, immediately after
finishing her studies at the Art Academy Leipzig. The exhibition concentrates on large
canvasses as well as drawings from the past five years. Susanne Kühn’s pictures make
deliberate reference to German Romanticism, to the daunting transcendence inherent to the
visions of nature realized by Joseph Anton Koch or C.D. Friedrich. The images of mountains,
forests, gorges and eerie, moon-illuminated landscapes, which at a first glance seem to be in
the naturalistic style of the old masters, are adroitly combined with elements from other
historical and cultural stylistic tendencies, so that the final images have a fully contemporary
impact.
Lutz/Guggisberg
June 1 – August 12, 2007
The Swiss artistic duo Andres Lutz (*1968) and Anders Guggisberg (*1966) are known in their
home country for their installational output. The objects, images and video projections which
they delight in assembling impart to the exhibition space an atmospheric transformation
through which we discard our customary mental categories and accept the invitation to a
playfully associative, ongoing development. In addition to the installation in the exhibition
hall, Lutz and Guggisberg have personally designed a labyrinthine passageway extending
through the entire U-form of the upper floor and consisting of mid-sized, small, and even
minute chambers.
The exhibition is a collaboration with the Kunsthaus Aarau, Switzerland.
Ausgezeichnet!
March 30 – May 13, 2007
The participating artists are:
J. Tobias Anderson (S), Pascal Danz (CH), Katja Davar (UK/G) , Kate Davis (UK), Katy Dove (UK),
Gabriela Fridriksdottir (IS), Franziska Furter (CH), Knut Henrik Henriksen (N), Leni Hoffmann (G),
Cristina Ohlmer (G), Yehudit Sasportas (IL), Christoph Schmidberger (Austria/USA), Stefan Thiel
(G).
In recent years, the theme of drawing has attained a considerable degree of attention. This
tendency mirrors the currently intensified investigation by many artists of the possibilities
inherent to the medium. “Ausgezeichnet!” examines works which are situated at the borders of
drawing and which not only question what drawing actually means, but also probe its
relationship to painting, sculpture, film and photography.
The spectrum of “Ausgezeichnet” extends from drawings on paper, executed in various
techniques, past the extension of the generic term “drawing” to include plastic, spaceencompassing
works, all the way to animated drawings. Accompanying the exhibition is a
catalogue (modo verlag).
George Shaw
January 26 – March 18, 2007
With a certain nostalgia, George Shaw (*1966) paints landscapes and buildings in urban
outskirts inhabited by the British working class which cohere into an image of collective
memory. His works pay tribute to the British films of the Kitchen Sink genre of the nineteensixties,
but in spite of the artist’s fascination with English identity and culture, one nonetheless
discovers in the widest sense an image of the modern European world. In this exhibition, there
will be seen for the first time drawings which investigate the mythologies of popular British
culture from the nineteen-seventies and -eighties. The exhibition is a collaboration with the
Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva.
www.bertold.de