Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven: What Would I Do in Orbit?

The point of departure of the oeuvre of Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (*1951, lives in Antwerp) is the human brain with its analytical and irrational potential in terms of perception and cognizance. Van Kerckhoven’s logic is consistently counteracted by absurdity or mental disruptions, and the analytical is joined with the mystical without viewing this as a contradiction. The exhibition What Would I Do in Orbit? at the Kunstverein Hannover includes works by the artist, who initially trained as a graphic artist, from a total of 40 years.

Van Kerckhoven began dealing with research on artificial intelligence early on, whereby visual languages dominated that are influenced by scientific imaging processes: diagrams, graphic animations, and text-image schemes. She used digital on par with analog forms of expression as early as the 1980s and transferred the digitally constructed worlds into space. The artist uses primarily female bodies like “selfies” as protagonists in drawings, paintings, prints, and films. What is characteristic about her oeuvre is her biographical beginnings in the counter-culture of punk, feminism, and in the anti-academism typical of her generation, which engendered a pop aesthetic on the one hand, and highly complex contents on the other.

Despite the linear sequence of spaces and the supposedly systematic division, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven transforms the exhibition space of the Kunstverein Hannover itself into a kind of brain. Displays developed specifically for the exhibition separate the total of twelve chapters of the retrospective: the individual chapters with works from different years are brought together by means of heading-like texts that consist of notes by the artist.

With Van Kerckhoven’s solo exhibition What Would I Do in Orbit?, after the group exhibitions Digital Conditions (2015) and Digital Archives (2016) the Kunstverein is again presenting a show in which digital media or the altered handling of images they have engendered plays a role. The retrospective is being realized in collaboration with the Museum Abteiberg (November 13, 2016–February 26, 2017) and the M HKA in Antwerp (spring 2018, on this occasion a comprehensive catalogue will be published). The exhibition is accompanied by a newspaper with texts and illustrations by the artist. The Kunstverein Hannover has furthermore published an edition of Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven.

The M HKA in Antwerp has developed a website especially for What Would I Do in Orbit?

Director and Curator: Kathleen Rahn