Die Zeit hat kein Zentrum

One statement you often read at exhibition openings is “The artist is present,” but this show could easily amend it to “The collector is present”: after all, Ulrike Crespo (1950–2019) is present in every single one of the works.

Now, for the very first time, the exhibition Die Zeit hat kein Zentrum (Time Has No Center) is showing a selection of works from the private collection of the woman who set up the Crespo Foundation, herself an art photographer and devoted art connoisseur. Her collection testifies not only to her unique, objective eye, shaped by her professional experience as a psychologist and psychotherapist, but also to her exceptional feeling for each individual work by considering factors such as the artist’s oeuvre.

The title of the exhibition Die Zeit hat kein Zentrum has been borrowed from a painting in the collection by Ben Vautier—a Swiss-French artist who was among the early members of the Fluxus movement. He is known above all for his signature canvases featuring white writing on a black ground, with the paint applied directly from the tube onto the monochrome surface. The self-reflexive art produced during this conceptual artist’s long career questions the relationship between art and language, as well as the meaning of meaning, depiction, and ideas. On the reverse, a second work by Ben Vautier entitled Take art as it comes features a highly personal dedication to Ulrike Crespo as a collector. In a certain sense, these two works frame the exhibition.

The exhibition commences at the chronological starting point, too, with a series of black-and-white photographs by Stefan Moses, who portrayed Crespo’s grandparents Käthe and Karl Ströher in Munich in 1967. We see the two of them at the arrival of the collection of Pop Art and Minimal Art they had just acquired in New York, which would later form the core inventory of Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany. So Ulrike Crespo may well have inherited her passion for collecting from her grandfather.

The collection is hugely diverse, reflecting multiple means of artistic expression such as painting, photography, works on paper, sculptures, and even a video installation. Ulrike Crespo’s particular dedication to female artists and her penchant for depictions of the female body and intimate small-format works is very apparent.

Ulrike Crespo paid special attention to encouraging younger and less well-known artists. Presenting the show in the Open Space at Crespo Haus highlights the qualities of groups of works as much as it does the strengths of individual exhibits. Although the exhibition takes neither a chronological nor a hierarchical approach to displaying the works, a few focal points have been designated.

There is, for example, a particularly wide assortment of photographic works, ranging from typologies by Karl Blossfeldt and Darius Ziura to landscapes by Barbara Klemm, Robert Häusser, Magdalena Jetelová, and Gerald Zugmann, and from sociopolitical architectural photography by Brian McKee and Bernhard Prinz to Dayanita Singh’s pictorial archives and her “portable museums.”

There are a notably large number of animals depicted in Ulrike Crespo’s collection, often in connection with female protagonists, as exemplified by the works of Juul Kraijer, Anna Stangl, and Gabriele Muschel. The collector may well have been following Rosemarie Trockel’s provocative belief that “every animal is an artist.” In making her statement, Trockel was relativizing not only the definition of humans as the only creative creatures, but also gender-specific clichés. She questioned enduring fixed norms as well as role models, symbols, and encryptions that are socially and culturally determined.

Double-headed or two-faced figures are also a theme repeated throughout Crespo’s collection, with works by Bea Emsbach, Michael Kalmbach, Paloma Varga Weisz, Katsura Funakoshi, and Stefan Balkenhol. The human—and particularly female—form is accorded a particular significance, presented in all its fragility and vulnerability. Paintings by Miriam Cahn, Siegfried Anzinger, and Markus Schinwald, and works by Irene Bisang, Nicola Durvasula, Eric Fischl, Enne Haehnle, Petra Morenzi, Amparo Sard, Cornelia Schleime, and Nicole van den Plas display considerable heterogeneity in their depictions of the female figure. Yet masculine or feminine art were not categories that appealed to Ulrike Crespo; she was far more interested in humankind in general.

The largest group of works in the collection is the series of charcoal drawings by Dutch artist Juul Kraijer. Ulrike Crespo collected these pieces, some of them in a large format, over a period of fifteen years. Kraijer’s mysterious female nudes, which are all somehow physically associated with images of animals, present the human body with all its yearnings and nightmares.

Ultimately, Ulrike Crespo was highly mindful of the creative process of painting, as a painterly gesture in all its expressive forms. She was captivated by nude paintings for their own sake. Crespo’s collection disputes the classic opposition of figurative and abstract painting. In the words of Gilles Deleuze: “Painting has achieved its own justification.” Works by Günther Förg, Martha Jungwirth, and Herbert Brandl represent this viewpoint, as do paintings by Bernhard Frize, Gabi Hamm, Michael van Ofen, and Leiko Ikemura, culminating in Günter Umberg’s totally monochromatic pieces. In all the examples named above, the haptic quality of the brushstrokes is foregrounded and plays an exceptionally sensory role in the painting. 

The exhibition has been curated by Dr. Mario Kramer.

The show presents a selection of around 120 artworks. The idea to exhibit the collection did not come from Ulrike Crespo herself, and in fact she had no desire to present herself as a collector to the public. She viewed her collection as private, and treated the works of other artists sensitively and discreetly. Collecting art was something she undertook as a fellow artist, while also incorporating her perspective as a psychologist.

As a part of her legacy, the art collection has now been integrated into the charitable foundation. And just as the Crespo Foundation, in accordance with her wishes, is reaching out to the local community through the Open Space in Crespo Haus, the art collection is now also being presented to the public for the first time in this Open Space.