Aaron Young

Aaron Young
September 03 - November 12, 2006

Opening: September 02, 2006, 5 - 9 pm

Beginning September 2, 2006, KW Institute for Contemporary Art will present a project by the young American artist Aaron Young outside the entrance to KW. In performances, videos, photographs and sculptures, Aaron Young scrutinizes, transgresses, and attacks uninformed norms of behavior, cultural conditionings and societal conventions. The process of creating the works is based on an interaction between himself as artist and the viewers, in which the artist is the one who gives directions and leads the viewers to cross limits, but does not involve himself further in the active situation. In this way he animates the action as such and plays with the construction of the situationist and action-oriented, as well as with the fact that the result is only partially controllable.

Aaron Young’s sculptural works in particular are interventions in public space that irritate and elicit reactions. For Berlin, Aaron Young has created the work IPO 25 (25 offerings) (2006).  IPO is the abbreviation for Initial Public Offering, in the sense of a stock-market enterprise, formerly referred to as going public. As an initial public offering, Aaron Young installed a bicycle on a lamppost outside KW; its silvery gleam and the entanglement of its separately chained pieces are impressive, though it is by no means functional.  The gleam as emblem of power, riches and esteem make it an object of desire, construct its worth—it may be tempting, or somewhat irritating on the public street space, somehow puzzling, not truly provocative, and in any case without use value.

The discussion about or definition of public space or art in public space is not the task of art as such; this object is simply there, asking: how long will it be there, what rules will it encounter, where will it lead? Through action and situation, the work investigates the borders, possibilities, and mobilities within public space.

With the generous support of the Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf.