Yael Bartana: Utopia Now!
May 25–November 24, 2024
Yael Bartana (b. 1970 in Israel; lives in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Rome) is considered to be one of the most important international artists of her generation. Her films, photographs, objects, written works and performances attempt to connect the past and the present in order to develop speculative futures. Bartana describes her manner of working as “Pre-enactment”—not a reproduction of what has been, but rather, an anticipation of what is to come. What if… According to the artist “Pre-enactment blends facts with fiction. It is a mental experiment that subjects historical narration to questioning, creates an alternative present and counterfactual story.”
Since the beginning of the 2000s, Yael Bartana has investigated themes as national identity and religious tradition, collective traumas and the yearning for redemption, patriarchal power structures and promises of salvation. While the point of departure engages with the present, her oeuvre questions and proposes thoughts on how we can live together in a future that defies the shared burden of our past.
The artworks selected for Utopia Now! at the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst present Bartana’s view of Germany’s past and present. Her most recent films, photographs and neon light sculptures, are a view into the Nation‘s past without concern for the German guilt complex. Rather, Utopia Now! enables us to imagine a possible positive future – with visions that transcend national borders and identities.
Martin Reichmann: Hyper!ons Epiphysis
June 21–August 25, 2024
Massive sculptures, rubble-like remains—the works of Martin Reichmann have a brutish character. His favorite material is concrete, a substance that he transforms into coarse sculptures which not infrequently become a central part of spatial stagings or performances. Trash and Antiquity, pop culture and the cultivation of remembrance, as well as a wide variety of narratives encounter each other here and are interconnect into an impressive amalgam which, situated in the “debris of today,” allows both perspectives, towards the future and into the past, in equal measure. Because the question arises: Quo vadis? Where is this society headed?
Arising at the Weserburg on the occasion of his first institutional exhibition is a large environment, a rubble landscape covering the entire area devoted to the exhibition. For this purpose, Reichmann has gathered heaped-up sculptures including casts of loudspeakers and horse-heads along with found pieces, debris and objects of all sorts which relate to cultural goods from various eras and epochs. Or to put it in the artist’s own words: “ruined remains, enameled stories, calcified brains.” The setting is complemented by video works. Moreover, there are plans for an artist’s publication printed on newspaper.
Martin Reichmann (b. 1989) lives in Bremen. He studied at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule in Kiel and at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen, where in 2022 he received his degree as a master student of Ingo Vetter. In 2022, Reichmann received the Karin Hollweg Prize, one of the most generously endowed awards of all the art academies in Germany.
Monochromy: About the aesthetics of published art
September 7, 2024–August 8, 2025
Exhibition at the Centre for Artists’ Publications
In monochromatism (Greek monochromatos = single-colored), artistic works consist of single colors. In the field of artists’ publications, conceptions involving monochrome surfaces have arisen repeatedly ever since the 1950s, with the goal of achieving as high a degree as possible of concentration and simplification. Here artists conduct a thematic investigation not only of aspects of color, aesthetics or emptiness, but also of philosophical and religious nothingness.
The examples on display celebrate the diversity of monochromy in the medium of the artist’s book: In 1960, herman de vries was one of the first to create a book consisting solely of white pages. The two-volume edition Salle de Fêtes—Sala delle feste (1998) by Ettore Spalletti, on the other hand, has only red or blue pages. Jiří Valoch thematizes “nothingness” in his artist’s publication Book about Nothing (1970). And his artist’s book Day and Night (1971) consists of a white and a black page.
Artists: Rozbeh Asmani, Irma Blank, Doro Boehme, Hugo Bonamin, Iñaki Bonillas, Stanley Brouwn, James Lee Byars, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Lucio Fontana, Heinz Gappmayr, Daniel Göttin, Fernanda Gomez, Nan Groot Antink, Paul Heimbach, Anne Heyvaert, Jean Keller, Yves Klein, Imi Knoebel, George Maciunas, Louise Nevelson, Olaf Nicolai, Ad Reinhard, Allen Ruppersberg, Ettore Spalletti, Jiří Valoch, herman de vries, Ian Wilson, et al.
Director: Janneke de Vries
Press contact: Jan Harriefeld, presse@weserburg.de / T + 49 (0) 421 5983934
