Michael Buhrs Reihenfolge der Bücher

Beate Passow (b. Stadtoldendorf, Germany, 1945; lives and works in Munich) creates installations, photodocumentaries, and collages that seek to salvage her subjects from oblivion, though as she sees it, her art is an effort to come to terms not so much with the past as with the present. When her compositional inventions touch on painful memories, their objective is not to arrive at new insights. Rather, she aims to uncover visible and verifiable states of affairs and throw them into sharp relief. In her cycle of pictures Monkey Business, the artist unfolds a mysterious fairy-tale world with a political edge. Strange animals and mythical figures populate the large-format black-and-white tableaux, which a closer look reveals to be woven tapestries. The unusual protagonists roam readily identifiable locations: Gibraltar, New York?s Wall Street, Brussels, or the island of Lampedusa. Behind these ostensibly simple facts of geography loom the darker aspects of contemporary European politics: Passow?s work calls for a debate on the systems, economic structures, and political movements that rule the continent.00Exhibition: Villa Stuck, München, Germany (19.05. - 22.11.2020).

Contemporary Visual Communication in a Historic Weaving Technique. Margret Eicher’s (b. Viersen, Germany, 1955; lives and works in Berlin) large-format tapestries combine the baroque form of the woven picture with familiar motifs excerpted from contemporary media images. She digitizes her sources and then assembles them in painstaking editing work on the computer. The resulting ‘media tapestries’ occupy the interface between the traditional work of art as a physical object and the electronic noise of the digital two worlds that at first glance would seem to be incompatible yet find themselves in harmonious union in Eicher’s art. In "Göttliche Liebe (Divine Love)", for example, Caravaggio’s "Crowning with Thorns" meets a kissing gay couple from a pro-tolerance campaign in Berlin, while Botticelli’s "Birth of Venus" is sampled together with a subway station in Frankfurt. In conceptual art production, the creative idea is central and its realization becomes secondary; in a final twist, "Lob der Malkunst (Praise of Painting)" elects this practice as its artistic lodestar.

Installations and musical sculptures exploring the politics of sound and cultural migration Berlin-based Turkish artist Nevin Aladag (born 1972) makes sculptures and installations that explore social, urban and political borderlines. Inspired by her multicultural upbringing, Aladag combines objects with disparate cultural origins to create pieces that function as visual “scores,” both reflecting and transcending their material components. In her fabric works, Aladag collages segments of carpets from across the globe to create brightly patterned geometric tapestries which, from afar, appear as abstract, modular paintings with bold borders separating each distinct element. For her most acclaimed piece, Music Room Athens , presented at Documenta 14, she combined parts from various string, wind and percussion instruments with found furniture to create assemblage sculptures that interrogate the role of sound in the making of an environment.

Spatial Experience versus Perception Abbas Akhavan (b. Tehran, Iran, 1977; lives and works in Toronto) can be counted among a generation of emerging Canadian artists reflecting on social issues through ephemeral, site-specific works. Akhavan’s works – sculptures, installations, drawings, videos, and performances – deal with destruction and exclusion, but also with acts of preservation and restoration. His conceptual objects show a creative process that is not yet complete. In his works, Akhavan refers to nature and the four elements – fire, water, earth, and air. Plants or animals become elementary design components. In the exhibition at Villa Stuck, visitors first encounter a barrier in the form of a thuja hedge, bringing the outdoors inside. Here, the artist has left conspicuous traces of preceding exhibitions: the walls are unrenovated, the air-conditioning is switched off, and previously covered windows have been uncovered. Thus, Akhavan questions the responsibilities of a museum and whether or not common strategies of preservation are actually contemporary. With a preface by Michael Buhrs and Verena Hein and contributions from Burcu Dogramaci, Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Amy Zion, as well as a discussion between Abbas Akhavan and Verena Hein.

An Kinder und Erwachsene gleichermaßen richtet sich das Buch zur Ausstellung in der Villa Stuck, die sich mit Konzeptionen der Kindheit aus der Perspektive der zeitgenössischen Kunst beschäftigt. Es enthält neben Text- und Bildbeiträgen auch Seiten, die zum Mitmachen einladen. Nicht zuletzt aufgrund der digitalen Revolution sind Kinder längst zu ebenbürtigen Partnern von Erwachsenen geworden. „Erwachsene sind eben nur ein bisschen größer“, sagt Hans-Joachim Gelberg, der mit „Geh und Spiel mit dem Riesen“ 1971 sein berühmtes Jahrbuch der Kinderliteratur herausgegeben hat. Künstler (u. a.) Thomas Eggerer, Josephine Pryde, Rosemarie Trockel

The work of Cornelius Volker (born in 1965), a Dusseldorf based contemporary painter, is celebrated in a mid-career retrospective by a museum exhibition that opens in February 2011 at the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich and travels on to three other venues in Goslar, Wuppertal, and Ludwigshafen. Volker's colorful paintings deal with simple, often mundane objects, and their everyday approach relates them to Pop Art. Tea bags, sandwiches, chocolates, and other food, but also books and the human figure are his favorite subjects. He paints with almost liquid and bright, artificial colors in a virtuoso 'al fresco' speedy manner - as if he wanted to merge Pop Art, caricature and action painting in his images.

Maler und Kulturrebell, Vegetarier, Pazifist und "Sonnenanbeter", Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1852-1913) war eine exzentrische Künstlerpersönlichkeit, die Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts nicht nur in der bayerischen Hauptstadt von sich reden macht. Barfuss und in eine Kutte gekleidet wetterte er vor dem Münchner Hofbräuhaus "gegen den Verzehr von Tierfetzen" und sah im "Tiermord" die Ursache für den "menschenmordenden Krieg". Diefenbachs Suche nach neuen Wegen führte ihn aus dem vermeintlich weltoffenen Schwabing ins abgeschiedene Isartal, von dort über Wien, Kairo und Triest schliesslich auf die von Bohemiens und Künstlern besuchte und besiedelte Mittelmeerinsel Capri, wo er 1913 starb und in Vergessenheit geriet. Ausstellung: Museum Villa Stuck, München, 29. Oktober 2009-31. Januar 2010.

Das Museum Villa Stuck zeigt im zentralen Treppenhaus mit den Installationen des Münchner Künstlers Martin Dessecker die erste Ausstellung in einer Reihe, die in loser Folge diesen Ort in einen Ausstellungsraum verwandelt. Martin Dessecker (*1958) beschäftigt sich seit Mitte der achtziger Jahre mit biomorphen und ornamentalen Formen. Seit 2001 entstehen frei vor der Wand schwebende Pappcomics, die im Zentrum der Ausstellung stehen. Ergänzt werden diese Arbeiten durch eine speziell für das Untergeschoss geschaffene Rauminstallation. Die Arbeiten Desseckers lassen sich in verschiedene Gattungen gliedern, die sich gerade im Nebeneinander durchdringen, zu neuen Formationen verbinden und dadurch eine zusätzliche gedankliche Ebene einbringen. Gerade deshalb sind sie in idealer Weise geeignet, ihre Geschichte(n) an diesem speziellen Ort zu entfalten. Ob in den Holzskulpturen, den Pingpongskulpturen oder in textilen Objekten, in immer neuen Konstellationen ist es das Gegenüber aus Materialität und Form, welches die den Arbeiten immanente Spannung erzeugt. Das die Ausstellung begleitende Katalogbuch ist mit großer Liebe zum Detail besonders ansprechend gestaltet.