Image: Radenko Milak, Madonna Kisses Britney, 2019 © Radenko Milak. Courtesy PRISKA PASQUER, Cologne
JUNE 20, 2020 – JAN. 10, 2021
NO ART WITHOUT MUSIC
The exhibition shows how artists and musicians are mutually influenced by each other. Visual artists like Richard Prince and Mark Leckey have taken up musical principles such as remixing or sampling to include them in their own works. The exhibition also features art made by musicians, including the ‘Band Name Paintings’ by Kim Gordon, one of the founding members of Sonic Youth. The tension between the dogma of the original in the art world and the popularity musicians achieve by selling or streaming as many copies of their art as possible provides dynamic mutual interaction. The monumental installation ‘We Buy White Albums’ by Rutherford Chang plays with this contradistinction: Chang collected 3,000+ vinyl copies of The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ and sorted them by serial number in a re-enactment of a record shop. Antiquated, stained or written on, each album turns out to be unique and special – like works of art in their own right. Peter Saville, the graphic designer behind Joy Division’s record covers, contributes to the exhibition with a new video installation featuring homages and rip-offs of his iconic ‘Unknown Pleasures’ motif.
FROM FANS TO CLUBS
Extreme forms of worship and adoration of pop idols and nightlife are also themes in the exhibition. Since the early 1990s, Wolfgang Tillmans portrayed stars like Grace Jones, Wu-Tang Clan, Björk and A$AP Rocky. The artists Phil Collins (no, not the singer) and Henning Strassburger are intrigued by how the phenomenon of extreme fandom – from Beliebers to the Army of the K-pop band BTS – has emerged since the age of The Beatles. The Bosnian artist Radenko Milak immortalised Madonna and Britney Spears’ iconic kiss during the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards in a photorealistic watercolour. Also shown are ten larger-than-life portraits of the Berghain bouncers by the German photographer Sven Marquardt — he is also the first doorman of the world renowned nightclub, the Berghain in Berlin. And in their series ‘Exactitudes’, the Rotterdam photographers Ellie Uyttenbroek and Ari Versluis captured the looks of ‘gabbers’, as the fans of gabber techno are called.
SYNAESTHESIA
Music can blow you away when you turn up the volume, or it can transport you back in time. But how can we recreate a listening experience as an image? The German painter Bettina Scholz says: “When I am listening to music, I see colours”. Scholz translated her perception into behind-glass paintings in which clouds of ink are spread out on brightly coloured sheets of glass. Other artists in the exhibition are playing with synaesthesia, a phenomenon where one sensory experience subconsciously evokes another. The French photographer Julien Lescoeur is inspired by the music of Joy Division. His haunting grey-scale photographs show his attempt to translate a feeling of isolation that he clearly feels in the band’s music.
COLLABORATION
The exhibition is realised in collaboration with the Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Guest curator is the author and curator Max Dax, who became known for being editor-in-chief to both ‘Spex’ and ‘Electronic Beats’ — two German magazines for pop culture that changed the way we look at music and art.
ARTISTS
In ‘Black Album / White Cube’ you will find works by Daniel Blumberg, Rutherford Chang, Phil Collins, Anton Corbijn, Cyprien Gaillard, Kim Gordon, Juro Grau, Arthur Jafa, K Foundation, Scott King, Peter Knoch, Mark Leckey, Julien Lescoeur, Luci Lux, Sven Marquardt, Michaela Melián, Radenko Milak, Olaf Nicolai, Albert Oehlen, Richard Prince, Thomas Ruff, Peter Saville, Thomas Scheibitz, Michael Schirner, Bettina Scholz, Emil Schult, Andrea Stappert, Henning Strassburger, Wolfgang Tillmans, Philip Topolovac, Rosemarie Trockel / Thea Djordjadze, Ari Versluis & Ellie Uyttenbroek, Wolfgang Voigt, Cosima von Bonin and Mason Williams.
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