Sanja Ivekovic
General Alert
Selected Works 1974-2006
September 1-October 15, 2006
Opening August 31, 2006
Kölnischer Kunstverein
Die Brücke
Hahnenstraße 6
50667 Köln
Sanja Ivekovic is regarded as one of the most important artists of a “middle” generation. In addition to an extensive retrospective selection of her work, the exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein also show her recent works. At first glance the photographs, videos, objects and performances that Sanja Ivekovic has created since the mid-seventies seem to follow the laws of a glamorous pop culture. For instance, in “Double Life” from 1975 Sanja Ivekovic contrasted conventional icon-like magazine and advertising photos of women with private pictures of herself, in which the related gesture compels a comparative and reflexive reading. Inscribing herself as a person and thus the private into public discourse, in her work Sanja Ivekovic pursues the question of how the routines of everyday life are influenced by the dictate of fashion, advertising and the star cult. At the same time, for the artist the body is always only the body in the representation an image surface dominated by the gaze. Sanja Ivekovic purposely exposes herself to the male gaze, emphatically placing the body, sexuality and gender in the context of the political. In her most recent works she also refers to the collapse of former Yugoslavia, the ethnic cleansings, the living conditions of refugees and women’s anti-fascist resistance.
The exhibition has been realized in cooperation with the Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, where Sanja Ivekovic’s first comprehensive solo exhibition was shown in 2001.
Kölnischer Kunstverein
Die Brücke
Hahnenstraße 6
50667 Köln
