„Do you get what you see?“ Grieder contemporary, Zürich, 2016/17

GRIEDER CONTEMPORARY
Do you get what you see? 

curated by Melanie Dankbar
November 25, 2016 – January 21, 2017 

The starting point of Do you get what you see? is the sense of wonder felt by the eight artists featured in this exhibition: Björn Dahlem, Florian Graf, Andreas Greiner, Bethan Huws, Erinna König, Albrecht Schäfer, Albrecht Schnider and Jorinde Voigt.

The particular sense of wonder that unites them is no ordinary sensation. It is a wonder that takes in the world, that kindles philosophical thought and artistic sensibility and action. It is a sense of won- der about the things that surround us: about the microcosmos and the macrocosmos, about human- kind and nature, about the complex relationship of art, music, literature and life – and about Marcel Duchamp, without whom this exhibition would be unthinkable.

At the end of each creative process practised by these eight artists are fascinating works, whose clear, distinctive pictorial idioms instantaneously ensnare the observer at an aesthetic level. From the very first moment of encounter, however, it is evident that these works are in no way elegantly sha- ped illustrations, but the concentrated product of an intense process-oriented engagement. Taking the next step by wishing to understand this engagement from our own perspective is an adventurous and fulfilling undertaking resembling a puzzle – one that leads to new realms of perception and thought.

Throughout this, the path to a form of knowledge is as lacking in linearity as the creative process of the artist, and the questions that arise not only become more, rather than less, plentiful, but also lead to new turnings along the way. The only constant is the work itself; it is the lynchpin of the engangement and, in its complexity, its ruptures, its poetry and its humour, a source of enrichment that is inseparably linked with both the observer and the artist.

—

Erinna König (*1947 Warstein) lives and works in Düsseldorf. She studied (art, philosophy, comparative religions, Jewish studies and Eastern Asian History of Art) at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (under Dieter Roth, Joseph Beuys and Ole John Povlsen, whose film class she co-founded), and at the universities of Bonn and Cologne. In 1971 she was a master pupil of Joseph Beuys. In 2006-2008 she was visiting professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel college of fine arts. In recent years her work has been seen in important institutional group exhibitions, including at the Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf; Kunstmuseum Bonn; and most recently in the exhibition Ruhe vor dem Sturm. Post minimalist art from the Rhineland at the Museum Morsbroich.