From De Stijl to Boekie Woekie: Artist Publications from The Netherlands
March 11–September 10, 2023
Centre for Artists’ Publications
The exhibition covers more than one hundred years of art from the Netherlands. It starts with the De Stijl movement from the beginning of the twentieth century, along with the same-named periodical of Theo van Doesburg, which was dedicated to the renewal not only of art, but also of architecture, design, typography, and poetry. The concluding focus is on Boekie Woekie – the artist-run bookstore for books by artists in Amsterdam – which can already be considered to be legendary. The exhibition is a cooperation with the Brokken Zijp Foundation of Art (BFA) in the Netherlands.
Artists
Karel Appel, Stanley Brouwn, Aart van Barneveld, Ulises Carrion, Hans Clavin, Constant, Corneille, Herman Damen, Ad Dekkers, Theo van Doesburg, Christian Dotremont, Pier van Dyck, Henriëtte van Egten, Michael Gibbs, Nan Groot Antink, Harry Haarsma, Harmen de Hoop, Ko de Jonge, Asger Jorn, Bert Loerakker, Lucebert, Jan van Munster, Willem de Ridder, Tajiri Shinkichi, Peter Struycken, Rod Summers, Oej Tjeng Sit, Fiona Tan, Jan van der Til, Rúna Torkelsdóttir, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Jan Voss, herman de vries, Marijke van Warmerdam, Alicja Werbachowska, Robert Zandvliet.
Hannah Villiger: I Am The Sculpture
July 1–October 8, 2023
The Swiss artist Hannah Villiger (1951–1997) was a trained sculptress. She used a Polaroid camera to conduct a cartographical exploration of her own body and her immediate spatial surroundings and, in large-scale pictorial formats and extensive blocks, to examine both of these with regard to their sculptural qualities. In her artistic output, there is an encounter between an investigation of her own existence by means of corporeality, nature or urban architecture on the one hand, and an experimental mixture of classical attributions of genre on the other. On the basis of these themes, her oeuvre formulates a clarity, a courageousness and a poetry which today are more relevant than ever.
The Swiss artist Eric Hattan (b. 1956, lives in Basel) was invited for the selection, arrangement and focal orientation of the works on display. As both an artistic colleague and the longstanding administrator of her estate, he is a coeditor of Villiger’s catalogue raisonné and a widely recognized expert with regard to her creative output. The exhibition which he has conceived for the Weserburg lays out the fundamental thematic lines of her oeuvre through exemplary works and achieves a connection between personal and objective access. In this endeavor, “Hannah Villiger. I Am The Sculpture” brings surprising work constellations together with materials from the estate and with the filmic perspective of Eric Hattan onto Villiger’s sculptural and pictorial ideas.
In collaboration with foundation THE ESTATE OF HANNAH VILLIGER.
The Way We Are 5.0
September 30, 2023–January 26, 2025
What got underway in 2019 as the experimental trying-out of a new exhibition format has successfully established itself in the meantime. This will be the fifth new hanging of the collection exhibition “The Way We Are”.
Instead of concentrating on the presentation of a single collection, the serially structured exhibition brings together loans from a large number of international collections both private and corporate as well as from artists, augmented with exemplars from the museum’s own stock of works. In order to facilitate access for visitors to the abundance of works outside classical art-historical attributions, the works coming from various eras and contexts are grouped into thematic areas. Once per year, there are changes in the current constellations of works from various contexts and eras: works are added, disappear or wander into another context; thematic areas are altered; new artist’s spaces are installed. This creates an opportunity for making new discoveries as well as for encountering works once again. Extending over 2,500 m², “The Way We Are” offers insights into international art from the 1960s right up to the present and gives rise to unexpected interpretations through a broad range of media. Topics of current social discourse are addressed, questions with regard to form are raised —richly varied, surprising, lively, and repeatedly different.
KONTAKT with Guy Schraenen
October 14, 2023–February 4, 2024
Centre for Artists’ Publications
The internationally active collector, gallery owner, publisher, essayist, filmmaker and producer of radio programs Guy Schraenen had, as a freelance curator, a formative influence on the development of today’s Centre for Artists’ Publications at the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst. The Archive for Small Press & Communication (ASPC) which he established in Antwerpen in 1974 served as the basis for the foundation in 1999 of this department at the Weserburg, today the only one of its kind throughout Europe. Over more than ten years, Schraenen presented around thirty exhibitions at the Weserburg, including the comprehensive survey “Out of Print. An Archive as Artistic Concept” in 2001 and “Vinyl. Records & Covers by Artists” in 2005. He died in Paris in November 2018.
In tribute to and remembrance of the creative output of Guy Schraenen, the Centre for Artists’ Publications is presenting an overview of his diverse activities. The exhibition is being realized in collaboration with the Biblioteca y Centro de Documentación at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reine Sofía in Madrid.
Kay Rosen: NOW AND THEN
November 18, 2023–March 31, 2024
The Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst is presenting the first institutional solo exhibition of Kay Rosen in Europe. Ever since the 1970s, the American artist (b. 1943 in Corpus Christi, Texas; lives in New York City and Gary, Indiana) has been using language as artistic material. She is internationally known above all for wall works which render individual words, sentences or series of letters, often in massive dimensions. Coming together here in an impressive manner are minimalist form, aesthetic impact and intelligent contents.
Kay Rosen imparts perplexing twists to everyday concepts and words through their arrangement as well as their design in terms of typography and color. Whether it is a matter of neologisms, redefinitions or onomatopoetic explorations, Kay Rosen repeatedly reveals surprising levels of verbal significance. Often coming into focus are issues involving a critique of society.
The exhibition in Bremen brings together wall works, paintings, drawings, prints and videos. To be seen in addition to exemplary major works are also new, wall-filling paintings that were especially developed for the spaces of the museum. The Weserburg is thereby making possible, in recognition of the artist’s eightieth birthday, a fresh encounter with and rediscovery of a complex artistic oeuvre.
Director: Janneke de Vries
Press contact: Jan Harriefeld, presse@weserburg.de / T + 49 (0) 421 5983934
