Katharina Sieverding
Close Up

 

 

2 October – 27 November 05

 

 

Opening: 1.10.2005, 17 - 21 h

The show Katharina Sieverding: Close Up has been presented at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center / MoMA until the end of February 2005 and was the first comprehensive solo showing of the artist's work in New York. From October 2 to November 27, 2005 the exhibit will be shown at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in significantly altered form and extended by works in public space.

Sieverding, who was born in Prague in 1944, has made a significant contribution to pushing the boundaries of contemporary artistic practice. Since the 1960s, with unprecedented rigor, she has used her own image to occasion and provoke reflections on politics, social mores and culture (recall the poster campaign Deutschland wird Deutscher in 1995 in collaboration with KW). Her position is that artists have a responsibility to engage with political issues and develop multivalent images for and provocative artistic responses to the rapid developments of present-day life. In the context of Close Up Katharina Sieverding lauched the poster campaign Die Pleite on Wednesday, the September 28, covering hundreds of sites in Berlin. The title is a reference to the magazine of the same name that was published by George Grosz, Wieland Herzfelde and John Heartfield in the 1920s.

Close Up will give a unique opportunity to explore the cinematographic aspect of Sieverding's work, in particular the large-format portraits that make up a major part of her oeuvre such as Transformer (1973/74) or Stauffenberg-Block (1969). The exhibit offers a comprehensive survey of her work from the late 1960s up to the present and focuses on some of her most important series of photographic installations. In addition some of her moste important early films are being shown such as Life-Death, Berlin (1969), China, September-Oktober 1978 Beijing, Yanan, Xian, Luoyang (1978 by Klaus Mettig/Katharina Sieverding). The latter one is shown together with the DVD-Double-Projection Shanghai (2002/2003).

Furthermore Katharina Sieverding will display archive material in a curated space that gives insight into the political and social climate of the 1960s and '70s. In addition a video entitled T.V. SAMPLE(1978 – 2001), presenting the collected TV coverage on Katharina Sieverding, and a documentation of the closure of Josef Beuys' class at the Düsseldorf art academy, Akademie Düsseldorf (1969), are shown in this context.

The Berlin exhibit was re-conceptualized by Gabriele Horn, director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, in close cooperation with Katharina Sieverding.

The New York exhibit, which was curated by Alanna Heiss, Director P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA together with Daniel Marzona, free curator and Amy Smith Stewart, curator P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA and is the result of close collaboration between P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA, New York and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

Furthermore we are happy to announce that Katharina Sieverding: Close Up will travel on to be shown at the Bunkier Stucky in Cracow (01.27.2006 – 02.26.2006) and at the Muzeum Ludwig in Budapest (03.23.2006 – 05.28.2006).

The exhibit is accompanied by a catalogue, edited by Klaus Biesenbach, of more than 550 pages, which includes a comprehensive presentation of the influential artist's early picture archive. The catalogue also features essays by Klaus Biesenbach, Norman Bryson, Sabeth Buchmann, Katja Diefenbach, Brian O´Doherty, Alanna Heiss, Daniel Marzona, Amy Smith-Stewart, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau .

Price at KW: 39,95 Euro

The creation and publication of the catalogue was made possible thanks to the support of Kunststiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

Close Up was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin as well as Rosa and Gilberto Sandretto, and Julia Stoschek.

Thanks to the Circle of Friends of the Kunst-Werke Berlin – Gesellschaft für zeitgenössische Kunst e.V. for financing the poster campaign