Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Univerzálne Futurologické Operácie at Kölnischer Kunstverein 19&nbspJuly–21&nbspSeptember, 2003.

Július Koller (1939–2007) was one of the most important Eastern European artists working since the 1960s. From the mid-1960s he designed Antihappenings and Antipictures, creating a playfully ironic oeuvre that combined a Dadaist spirit with radical-skeptical stance. Koller painted object-images in white latex and pictures of question marks that became the universal symbol of his critical view of everyday life and reality. Koller saw tennis and table tennis as participatory art forms and here too he combined sport with political statement by demanding that the rules of the game and fair play be adhered to—as the basis of all social action. After the Prague Spring was put down, Koller began his U.F.O.naut series that challenged reality with “cultural situations” and utopias of a new, cosmohumanistic culture and future.

More on Július Koller can be found here.

Three years in the making, ‘Projekt Migration’ was a large-scale exhibition held in various traditional and nontraditional sites around the city of Cologne, with the Kölnischer Kunstverein serving as the primary host venue. Organized by a team including Kathrin Rhomberg, director of the Kölnischer Kunstverein, and Zurich-based curator and filmmaker Marion von Osten, ‘Projekt Migration’ investigated the history of postwar migration to western Europe in relation to current debates that place immigrants at the center of political contestation. Part socio-historical anthology and part contemporary art exhibition, the project was one element of an — initiative by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Federal Cultural Foundation) that also included screenings, a symposium, performances, workshops, discussions, music.

Featuring artists such as; Vlassis Caniaris, Gustav Deutsch, Lukas Duwenhögger, Gülsün Karamustafa, Christian Philipp Müller, Henrik Olesen, Mladen Stilinović, Rosemarie Trockel.

Produced on the occasion of Sean Snyder: No Apocalypse, Not Now, at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, 9 November–22 December, 2013. With texts by Moritz Wesseler and Sven Lütticken.

Sean Snyder takes the global circulation of data as the raw materials for his practice. He experiments with multi-layered signs revealing unexpected layers in an intentionally non-pedagogical way. Refusing to conform to conventions, his practice avoids simple classification. In resistance to contemporary art’s tendency to aspire to a mechanized consumer society, his investigations parody and mirror their processes. More information here.