15 May 2009

Space Revised #1-4 at GAK Bremen, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof

Art is located in space. Without it art is unthinkable. Whether installed as two or three dimensional – art takes up space, creates and defines space. At the same time it is determined through space, whether formulated as environment, context or contextualisation. In order to do justice to the multifaceted state of space in contemporary art production the exhibition project Space Revised is presenting exemplary instances in four institutions. Appropriation of space, loss of space, space displacement and social space make up the four perspectives out of which the cooperation of GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst Bremen, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Halle für Kunst Lüneburg and Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof traces the current intermediate condition of todays artistic production. Simultaneously Space Revised also takes up the subject at a conceptual level, as its distribution over four exhibition spaces in Northern Germany offers the possibility to examine various conceptions of space while travelling across space.


17th May – 9th August
GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst Bremen
#1 Friendly Takeovers. Strategies of Space Appropriation
Cezary Bodzianowski, Bob Braine & Leslie C. Reed, Trisha Brown, Christian Haake, Guillaume Leblon, Daniel Maier-Reimer, Katrin Mayer, Rosalind Nashashibi, Peles Empire

The exhibition Friendly Takeovers. Strategies of Space Appropriation in the GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst Bremen emanates from the notion that one of the most fundamental questions posed in art lies in its actual location and the relationship to its surroundings. Hence at first it implies being conscious of its own environment, facing it squarely and investigating it from various positions. Friendly Takeovers presents artistic approaches which in various ways appropriate the space in which they move and are experienced in order to attain a fixing of location. Emanating from the New York choreographer Trisha Brown as historical and interdisciplinary reference the various approaches are tensed up in a net-like manner and formulate psychological, architectonic, temporal, institutional and corporeal quality of the space.

Furthermore the New York artist duo Bob Braine and Leslie C. Reed are to mark out and highlight the circa 300 meter long footpath between GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst and Künstlerhaus Bremen as an intervention in public space.

17th May – 16th August
Künstlerhaus Bremen
#2 Whereabouts Unknown
Bob Braine & Leslie C. Reed, Elín Hansdóttir, Erik Olofsen, Guido van der Werve, John Wood & Paul Harrison

Three dimensional space and time are necessary parameters of orientation and locomotion, which we depend on blindly. In fact there are numerous possibilities for one to find oneself back in the situation, to have lost the recognised system of references and no longer be able to locate oneself. The known spatial arrangement gets out of control. What happens when one blanks out or loses the constants of space and time? What is interesting, aside from this condition of loss is the behaviour resulting out of it. What reactions follow? Is it possible to create one's own locating system? Whereabouts Unknown at the Künstlerhaus Bremen joins various artistic strategies closer to such a position to provoke them and to deal with them.

Furthermore the New York artist duo Bob Braine and Leslie C. Reed are to mark out and highlight the circa 300 meter long footpath between GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst and Künstlerhaus Bremen as an intervention in public space.

16th May – 12th July
Halle für Kunst Lüneburg
#3 What if This Was a Piece of Art?
Guillaume Bijl, Wolfgang Breuer, Yan Duyvendak, FLOSS/VHDG, Graham Hudson, Christian Jankowski, Benoît Maire, Falke Pisano

In the project What if This Was a Piece of Art? at Halle für Kunst Lüneburg space is conceived as thought and meaning space, in which the qualities of art unfold in an 'atmosphere of theory'. As a result the attempt is undertaken to reverse the process initiated by Marcel Duchamp in 1913 at the Armory show in New York: It is not the aim to investigate what happens when an everyday object transgresses the threshold of the institution and is transformed via an aura-inducing act into art. Instead the question is how such a meaning producing power can be transmitted to the exterior and the thought generating view tested on art extends to current everyday life. In this way a poeticised space opens meaningful relationships in which the differences between everyday objects and artworks become penetrable.

16th May – 12th July
Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof
#4 Manufactured Communities. Space and Community
»Series:Order says – Future« with Kai Schiemenz

In the historical and sumptuously wood-panelled, first-class waiting-room now exhibition space of the Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, the Berlin artist Kai Schiemenz has implanted an accessible sculpture, daubed with US navy dazzle-camouflage patterns. In its iridescence between sculpture, model and architecture, between view and usability, his spatial intervention concerns itself with the construction of communities in public spaces. Architecture is not conceived as a neutral box, but rather as a constitutive element: communities are basically formed and standardised by collectors. With the debate on the disciplinary function of architecture forming the background in a laboratory situation of workshops, colloquia and performances all taking place within and exterior to the sculpture, Manufactured Communities. Space and Community investigates the courses of action and practices in space.

A multifaceted accompanying programme complements the exhibition presentations thematically in all four institutions featuring film screenings, artist discussions, performances, guided tours and lectures.


The exhibition is funded by:

German Federal Cultural Foundation, Bremen Marketing GmbH, Land Niedersachsen, Lüneburgischer Landschaftsverband, Stadt Lüneburg, Generalkonsulat der Niederlande, Senator für Kultur Bremen, Stiftung der Sparkasse zur Förderung der Kunst