06 Apr 2010

Kunsthalle Fridericianum presents Thomas Zipp

Thomas Zipp (WHITE REFORMATION CO-OP) MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO

With (WHITE REFORMATION CO-OP) MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO, his largest exhibition thus far, Thomas Zipp is transforming the entire Kunsthalle Fridericianum into a 'mental institution' depicted with gloomy aesthetics and satirical exaggeration. This idea is in line with Zipp's artistic context: standard and deviation, power and suppression, religion, science, ecstasy, madness and the unconscious are only a few of the categories from which he develops the questions with which he confronts visitors.

Thomas Zipp (born in Heppenheim, Germany, 1966) combines several hundred paintings, drawings and sculptures from his oeuvre with large architectural fixtures to create a total installation especially conceived for the Fridericianum. Darkened halls and narrow corridors, lined by locked as well as by accessible chambers, show the way through the inner architecture. Clad in black and structured by the art pieces themselves, the 'institution' consists of bedroom, dining hall, kitchen, washing rooms and toilets, sport room, art room, director's room and different treatment rooms as well as a chapel and a padded cell.

'In view of the existence of indifference and conformist, limited, ecstatic conditions, today, resistance to untruth will no longer interest anyone anymore.' (Thomas Zipp in: Achtung! Vision: Samoa & The Family of Pills)

The catalogue to the exhibition (WHITE REFORMATION CO-OP) MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO will appear in May 2010 at Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, with texts by Veit Loers and Rein Wolfs.