PALERMO
21st October 2007 – 20th January 2008
Grabbeplatz 4 D-40213 Düsseldorf
Tel: +49 (0)211 8996 243 / +49 (0)211 32 70 23
www.kunsthalle-duesseldorf.de
www.kunstverein-duesseldorf.de
The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen present the first comprehensive exhibition of Palermo’s works in Düsseldorf“Palermo, the name had been found and slowly it came to stand for the hand belonging to the greatest painter of this generation …”, wrote Georg Jappe in 1977, shortly after Peter Heisterkamp (1943-1977), whose artist’s pseudonym was Palermo, died unexpectedly at the age of 33. The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen celebrate their 40th anniversary in their home on the Grabbeplatz with an exhibition of his works specifically conceived to accommodate the spatial properties of the building itself. In conjunction with this celebration, which has been designed to render visible both the architecture as well as the institutions themselves, for which it was originally built, a comprehensive overview of Palermo’s work is shown for the first time in the town that was at the centre of his life for many years.
Together with the guest curator Susanne Küper, Ulrike Groos (Kunsthalle Düsseldorf) and Vanessa Joan Müller (Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen) and their team have prepared this presentation of Palermo’s pioneering œuvre. Artworks from pivotal groups of works — cloth pictures, metal paintings, objects, drawings — chart in exemplary fashion the development of an artist’s career which was cut short prematurely and which not only exerted a great influence on his contemporaries, but also on the artistic practices of today.
Palermo came to Düsseldorf in 1962 in order to study at the Academy initially under Bruno Goller and then under Joseph Beuys. He developed his unmistakeable abstract pictorial language here and later in the USA (1973-1976) that decisively extended the concept of the picture and explored a new relationship between composition and space.
The characteristic balancing act between composition and object is equally a theme of the exhibition as is the physical quality of his works. The development from traditional composition on the one hand to the object on the wall on the other, all the way through to wall paintings, themselves redolent of categories such as surface, space and time, is exemplified in the selection of works on show, some of which are being exhibited in public for the first time. It is not the individual composition that takes the limelight, but rather the overall effect and interaction of many works in the space provided, very much in accordance with the artist’s ideas. Works on loan from international museums and private collections supplement the exhibition to provide a comprehensive view of an artist whose work remains abidingly current.
A catalogue is published by the DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag in which Palermo’s work and his characteristic method of working is discussed in conversations between art historians, critics, artists and contemporaries. The differing and equally valid perspectives on Palermo’s work coalesce to form a richly facetted image underlining Palermo’s overall art historical merit and status. Publication (approx. 240 pages).
Opening hours: Tue – Sat 12 noon – 7 pm, Sundays and public holidays 11 am – 6 pm
Admission: Young people under 18 and the disabled: free admission
Free guided tours: Wednesdays, 6 pm as well as Sundays, 12.30 pm
The exhibition is sponsored by:
KUNSTSTIFTUNG NRW, Der Ministerprasident des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen and Ernst & Young.
The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf is funded by:
Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf
The Kunstverein is supported by:
Stadtwerke Düsseldorf AG
