Kunsthalle Mainz announces new Director: Stefanie Böttcher
Kunsthalle Mainz
Am Zollhafen 3-5
55118 Mainz
Germany
mail [at] kunsthalle-mainz.de
www.kunsthalle-mainz.de
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Kunsthalle Mainz gained a new artistic director in June 2015 when the 37-year-old German curator and art historian Stefanie Böttcher took over the helm from Thomas D. Trummer.
“We are delighted to have found someone who is so experimental, inquisitive, resourceful, and with such good connections to the international art scene,” concludes the appointments committee. “During her time in Bremen, she impressively demonstrated her ability in setting up Künstlerhaus Bremen and then building it up as a venue for actively experiencing contemporary art.”
While artistic director of the Künstlerhaus from 2007 until 2013, Böttcher gave young international artists such as Lara Almarcegui, Sofia Hultén, Ahmet Öğüt, Pilvi Takala and Kateřina Šedá their first solo shows in Germany. In addition, she organised extensive survey exhibitions of works by more seasoned practitioners like Tim Etchells and Robert Kinmont. Group exhibitions also featured heavily during her tenure: embracing a wide range of motifs, the shows frequently addressed the sheer diversity of themes and issues at a global level and in the field of contemporary art, focusing on everything from a small-scale individual microcosm to large-scale collective experiences. Böttcher’s curatorial projects have included examinations of the shadow in contemporary art (You Never See It Twice, 2008), artistic freedom (The Ideal Place to Talk with Freedom in Private, 2010) and leaving behind traces as a form of artistic practice (Fish Leave No Traces, 2010).
In 2013, the Goethe Institute awarded her a curatorial research stipend for Serbia, and in the same year, she curated the group exhibitions 7 Ways to Overcome the Closed Circuit and 8 Ways to Overcome Space and Time in cooperation with the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade (MoCAB).
From 2014 onwards, Böttcher was active as a freelance author and curator in Germany and abroad, publishing essays on art as a site for utopia and on individual artists. At the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (MoCAV) she curated Beauty Lies Inside Desire (2014) with Halil Altındere, Nathalie Djurberg, Klara Lidén and Agnieszka Polska.
Stefanie Böttcher’s programme of events at Kunsthalle Mainz kicks off in February 2016 with On the Shoulders of Giants, an international group exhibition exploring the phenomenon of predecessors. Further shows are currently being planned, including a solo exhibition devoted to the Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué.
Kunsthalle Mainz was established in 2007 as an exhibition venue for cutting-edge international art, presenting contemporary artistic viewpoints which depict and shed light on themes of current relevance for art, politics and society. Thanks to its innovative exhibition programme, the Kunsthalle provides the ideal introduction to contemporary art and the topical issues it deals with. Kunsthalle Mainz is both a driving force and a galvanising spark, a location for vibrant exchange, experimentation and dialogic discourse. Through tours, workshops and talks, visitors can find out more about the significance of art, its sensual potential and its impact on perception and society.
