Museum Folkwang

Peggy Buth: The Politics of Selection
Arwed Messmer: RAF - No Evidence / Kein Beweis
June 9–September 3, 2017

Opening: June 8, 7pm
Artist talk: June 10, 3pm

Museum Folkwang
Museumsplatz 1
45128 Essen
Germany

www.museum-folkwang.de
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Arwed Messmer. RAF – No Evidence / Kein Beweis
Much has been written and told from a journalistic, historical, literary, and cinematic perspective about the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion) and the "German Autumn" of 1977. For his latest work, the photographer and image archaeologist Arwed Messmer adopts a photographic point of view to explore this particular chapter of West German history. Messmer’s work starts off with the various kinds of pictures taken by police photographers—photos of demonstrations, pictures of crime scenes, and images taken by officers for reconnaissance purposes or while on duty—which the artist unearthed while looking through a number of state archives. He then employs an artistic process to appropriate the images for his own purposes, underlining the original function served by these crime-scene photographs, while also laying bear their destructive potential.

Arwed Messmer wishes to thank the Bundesarchiv, Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg, and the Polizeihistorische Sammlung Berlin for their cooperation and the Stiftung Kunstfonds and VG Bild-Kunst for their generous support.

In cooperation with the Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie

Peggy Buth. The Politics of Selection
Peggy Buth’s exhibition The Politics of Selection recounts a political story of our cities and suburbs. The artist understands urban space as somewhere overlain by social and economic forces, becoming both shaped and deformed in the process. Over the course of three chapters, Buth bears witness to social utopias and economic interests, attempts at integration and exclusion, hope—but also discrimination and smear campaigns. The subject of her artistic investigations are the suburbs of Paris and the social housing projects and urban streetlife in the US state of Missouri. Buth has expanded the scope of her documentary exploration for the exhibition at the Museum Folkwang to include the Ruhr region, after having worked in Essen and Duisburg.
 

Information
Scholarship: Arwed Messmer and Peggy Buth were awarded the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Scholarship for Contemporary German Photography in 2014. The exibitions are funded by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung.

Press conference: Thursday, June 8, 11am

Press contact: Anna Littmann: T +49 201 8845 160 / anna.littmann [​at​] museum-folkwang.essen.de

Public program: The exhibition will be accompanied by a range of public and educational programs. For the dates, please visit www.museum-folkwang.de or subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here.