Hans-Peter Feldmann
Kunstausstellung
22/02/2003 - 15/06/2003
Museum Ludwig
Bischofsgartenstraße 1
D-50667 Cologne
Tel: +49/221/221-22379
Fax: +49/221/221-24114
info@museum-ludwig.de
www.museum-ludwig.de
image: Copyright VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2003
For its reopening in November 2001, Museum Ludwig acquired for its
collection an extensive selection of Hans-Peter Feldmann’s work.
After the
purchase of Marcel Broodthaers complete graphics and editions with the
help of the “Stiftung Kunst und Kultur des Landes NRW” for
the Museum
Ludwig, these works represent another important contemporary artist, who
has his roots in the conceptual art of the seventies.
So Museum Ludwig owns the most comprehensive collection of the
“anti-photo
artist”, which will be presented to the public as part of the
“Kunstausstellung”.
Hans-Peter Feldmann does not produce works of art in a conventional
sense.
He collects, documents and arranges his own photographs, photographs
taken
by amateurs, pictures from newspapers, department-store decorations and
toys. He thus manages to elicit collective memories, dreams and visions
from these trivial everyday objects.
Hans-Peter Feldmann (born 1941, and at present living in Duesseldorf) is
one of the most important and interesting artists of Germany’s
art-scene
in the 1960s and 70s. He paved the way for the “appropriation
art” of the
1980s which used “appropriated” material such as private or
published
photographs. His way of dealing with the medium exerted a strong
influence
on the younger, neo-conceptualist generation of artists in the 90s.
A comprehensive retrospective exhibition at the Museum Ludwig will
provide
an overview of the works of this “anti-photo artist”
spanning a period of
almost four decades. During the first phase of his artistic activities,
between 1968 and 1980, Hans-Peter Feldmann created works which were both
homogeneous and rich in variation. They comprise a series of
small-format
magazines, reproductions of seemingly trivial motifs, letters,
postcards,
coloured newspaper pages and painted toys. To the present day he makes
references to social and political reality and his series thus undermine
the culture of mass-media images in our society. In one of his series he
presents the casualties of the “Deutscher Herbst” (German
Autumn – when
the Bader-Meinhoff left-wing terrorist group launched attacks on German
public figures and institutions) – without differentiating between
victims
and perpetrators. In another series he presents a cross-section of
society
in101 portraits – from a newborn child to an old woman. To the
present day
he has managed to maintain his mischievous awareness of the unusual and
bizarre in everyday life: a collection of 1930s ceramic cake plates will
be integrated into the exhibition.
The exhibition is a collaboration of the Fundacio Antoni Tapies
Barcelona,
the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, the Museum of
Photography
in Winterthur and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. The exhibition in Cologne
will also include a specially installed section on the importance of
images in prisons. Three prison cells from the JVA in Cologne Ossendorf
will be reconstructed.
Exhibition catalogue:
Hans-Peter Feldmann – 272 pages, edited by Helena Tatay, 306
pages,
numerous colour and black-and-white illustrations, English/German,
paperback (with illustrations and texts by Regis Durand, Hans Haacke,
Peter Fischli/ David Weiss, Helena Tatay, David Stroband, David Weiss,
Thomas Weski, Guy Schraenen, Martin Parr, Nuria Enguita Mayo). Price
during the exhibition: 35 EUR.
