Experimental Arrangement in Courtyard: Muthesius University
Location: Kumu courtyard
In collaboration with the Goethe Institute, the exhibition consists of installations by the students of Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, Germany. The exhibition takes place as a part of the German Spring 2014 programme of events.
In the flood of exhibitions we see, between all the art discourses and crises, the successes and failures, the challenges and the productivity, between all the locations where we test ourselves, and the conflict we take part in, there is always the question of one’s own artistic identity. What do we artists want today? What drives us forward? What does artistic work mean in this age? What expectations do we have of ourselves and of art, not only our own? This self-questioning is associated with the paradigm shifts which also relate to art education as much as to aesthetic approaches which engage young artists today.
While in the past few decades studies were oriented towards a delimiting, possibly original, distinguished position, guided by the idea of an autonomous work of art, the study of art today has become primarily personal experimentation. The point is to use free space, to test oneself far and wide, to explore interrelations between media and genres and to set new parameters. Exhibiting within the framework of a course of study has become an essential “format” of artistic research and presentation. In exhibiting, research work is transferred to the experimental stage.
Torben Laib (1981)
Pass, 2013, sound installation
The Kumu in Tallinn, with its proximity to the sea and the signal horns of ships offers suitable location for this sound installation. Once a day an alpine landscape opens up in the courtyard of the museum when the individual signal bursts of the
alpine horns are transformed into a traditional melody.
Hendrik Lörper (1977)
Foil Flags for the KUMU Tallinn, 2014, kinetic sculpture
Embedded in the architecture of the courtyard, the technical structure produces a stereotypical and intrinsic sequence of movements, resulting in a searching self-examination but also a questioning of the location. In the busy monotony the space opens itself up for tragedy, humour and poetry.
Jenny Reißmann (1974)
Settlers, 2014, sculpture
The organically sprawling structure is attached to the existing museum architecture. It can thus be read as a symbiotic or parasitic part of the building.
o.T., 2012, sculpture
Untitled, a lead-encased substructure, imitates the negative space beneath a bed. The hermetically sealed form resembles a sarcophagus and suggests the possibility of isolation.
Max Weißthoff (1988)
mass, 2013, spatial installation
Bicycle inner tubes cut open lengthways are sutured in parallel to a coherent, plane structure. As an invasive fragment, mass eclipses and interferes with the structure of the courtyard.
Artists:
Torben Laib, Hendrik Lörper, Jenny Reißmann ja Max Weißthoff
Curators: Elisabeth Wagner, Hendrik Lörper
Collaboration partners:
Goethe Institute in Estonia, Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design
