Invitation produced on the occasion of Kunst und Freundschaft, a two-person exhibition by Christian Philipp Müller and Ricardo Valentim at Galerie Lars Friedrich, Berlin, 30 April–12 June, 2021.

The friendship between Müller and Valentim began when they first met in 2008 at Manifesta 7 (Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy). Though Müller now lives in Berlin, and Valentim is currently in Lisbon, for many years both artists were based in New York, where they spent much time together visiting exhibitions and discussing their shared interests including art history, the culinary arts, travel, design, and typography. Though they had not previously considered doing a show together, Kunst und Freundschaft was triggered in part by this ongoing friendship. This exhibition not only situates their friendship and links between their practices, but it also comments on the social networks that define and support art production.

More information and documentation of the exhibition can be found here.

Produced on the occasion of Remco Torenbosch’s exhibition of Growth, 2019 at Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen for which Toren­bosch ap­pro­pri­ated a med­i­ta­tion video that he found cir­cu­lating on an in­ternet forum for stock traders. The video shows a mon­tage with a va­riety of flower fields, com­posed in such a way as to glo­rify the beauty of na­ture and ef­fec­tuate re­laxation through dig­ital de­vices. The piece ex­plores how the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of na­ture is cap­i­tal­ized on by the med­i­ta­tion in­dustry, in order to pro­mote better per­for­mance in the work­place.

The vir­tual rep­re­sen­ta­tion of flowers and na­ture and the video’s orig­inal place of cir­cu­la­tion also un­der­line the eternal con­nec­tion be­tween the nat­ural and the fi­nan­cial world: from the very first spec­u­la­tive bubble caused by tulip bulbs in the 17th cen­tury, to dis­aster in­vestors who are cashing in on the eco­log­ical cat­a­stro­phes of the fu­ture.

With a text by Sven Lütticken.

Produced on the occasion of Josef Strau’s exhibition at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 3 September–22 November, 2020, the first comprehensive institutional solo exhibition by Strau in Germany.

The exhibition brought together objects and text production made between 1991 and 2020 as an attempt to create an autobiographical depot, as if these objects were simply the result of time or of durations of psychological states, such as fear and anxiety, and sometimes also of desire. Strau’s complex, nested retrospective vessel contains, in addition to everyday stories, a random selection of objects representing, among other things, tigers, temples, tears, fences, children’s letters, angels, icons, and cured turtles. The most recent work is a spider clock, The 13 Hour Cymbal Spiderclock that exhales the Dreams, which announces a new time beyond the usual twelve hours.

This book aims to illustrate a little-known aspect of ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s art, the “artist’s invitation,” namely the material (be it a card or piece of paper) printed for the specific purpose of documenting an exhibition. The criterion employed to choose the material was that of privileging the participation of the artist him- or herself in the creative process that led to the object’s production. The artistic context on which this book focuses is that of Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Land Art, Pop Art, Fluxus, and Actionism, including Spanish and South American art, the importance of which warrants a new critical attention for the historical and political significance these movements had in their respective sites. The materials considered here come almost entirely from the collections of Bruno and Alessandra Tonini, Christoph Schifferli, Giorgio Colombo (Milan), and the Lafuente Archive (Santander).

Produced on the occasion of gerlach en koop, Was machen Sie um zwei? Ich schlafe, at the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, 19 September 2020–28 February, 2021. In an exhibition at the edge of sleep gerlach en koop display works by Ismaïl Bahri, Kasper Bosmans, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Mark Geffriaud, Voebe de Gruyter, Ian Kiaer, Kitty Kraus, Gabriel Kuri, Rita McBride, Guy Mees, Jacqueline Mesmaeker, Helen Mirra, Laurent Montaron, Melvin Moti, Jean-Luc Moulène, Henrik Olesen, Annaïk Lou Pitteloud, Emilio Prini, Bojan Šarčević, Shimabuku, Steve Van den Bosch, and a contribution by writer Haytham El-Wardany

Available to download here.

Set of 5 cards produced on the occasion of Jef Geys, Bergen Kunsthall, 20 November 2020–5 April 2021.

The exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall looks into some aspects that are specific to Jef Geys’ oeuvre, such as his work with pedagogy, architecture, and art history. Through a series of different chapters, the exhibition brings seminal works together with rarely seen objects and archive materials, focusing on the artist’s use of different production and circulation systems, such as the school, industrial workshops, rural spaces and the art world. His use of these distinct systems is explored as a questioning of authorship and identity, but also as an investigation of infrastructures through which meaning and knowledge is produced and distributed.

More information on the exhibition can be found here.

Nicholas Tammens’ talk Jef Geys and the School can be found here.