KölnShow2 by the European Kunsthalle

“What will be told of today tomor­row?“ are words that claim we must face the present. But, at the same time, the sen­tence ques­tions the rela­tion­ship between the past and the future, the way the past is recalled and con­tin­ues, the way sto­ries and his­tory are writ­ten, how myths evolve. When nine Cologne gal­leries set up a group­show in 1990, using their own gallery spaces to orga­nize “The Köln Show,“ they took a stand within the inter­na­tional art world. Nonethe­less, the inter­na­tional fame of Cologne as an art hub in the 80s faded in the 90s when the art scene began, fun­da­men­tally,  to transform.

Sev­en­teen years later, Cologne again took a stand. The Euro­pean Kun­sthalle was called to life in 2005 by the asso­ci­a­tion Das Loch e.V., which was devel­oped out of a protest move­ment against the demo­li­tion of the local cen­ter for con­tem­po­rary art, and this gave the sig­nal for a new cul­tural life in Cologne. So far, the Euro­pean Kun­sthalle has no actual build­ing, but only offices from which it oper­ates. This great flex­i­bil­ity and coop­er­a­tive struc­tures goes beyond the com­mon organ­i­sa­tional forms of the insti­tu­tion of a kunsthalle.

“What will be told of today tomor­row?“ or KölnShow2, is the Euro­pean Kunsthalle’s sec­ond exhi­bi­tion. In the same breath, it goes back to an ear­lier myth and pro­claims itself to be a self-referential ges­ture set just between guide­lines and humour.

Found­ing direc­tor Nico­las Schafhausen and guest cura­tor Flo­rian Wald­vo­gel invited 18 Cologne gal­leries and 22 artists to par­tic­i­pate in an adap­ta­tion of “The Köln Show.“ This time, it was not the gal­leries but the two cura­tors who chose what would be pre­sented and also placed the works in the gallery spaces. On the other hand, the gal­leries pro­vide a space for the artists of KölnShow2 and present their works along­side their actual gallery shows.

KölnShow2 is not based on a the­matic or for­mal coher­ence. It is deeply rooted in the coop­er­a­tive prin­ci­ple of tem­porar­ily availed space that, first of all, makes it pos­si­ble for the Euro­pean Kun­sthalle to oper­ate pub­licly. Being thus lim­ited, the spaces also allow the artists to dis­play their own spe­cific approaches. The works of the per­for­mance artists Tris Vonna-Michell and William Hunt, for instance, receive the free­dom, spa­tial as well as in terms of con­tent, that their art forms require. The exhi­bi­tion pro­gram­mat­i­cally dubs both as out­stand­ing cre­ators of con­tem­po­rary art but, at the same time, it places them in the­o­ret­i­cal con­text and com­pares their dis­course to that of the future.
While “Mod­els for Tomor­row: Cologne,“ Euro­pean Kunsthalle’s first exhi­bi­tion, showed artists that were estab­lished in the con­tem­po­rary art scene at the time, such as Vito Acconci, Liam Gillick and Lawrence Weiner, KölnShow2 presents artists and attempts that are widely unknown in the con­text of Cologne art. The young and inter­na­tional posi­tions in this group show are uni­fied only by the cura­tors’ selec­tion of them. In the end, KölnShow2 assem­bles artists who it is decided have the capa­bil­ity to be of impor­tance in the inter­na­tional art world of the future.
The pre­sen­ta­tional sit­u­a­tions in the gal­leries, how­ever, are as diverse as the artis­tic approaches pre­sented. Kwang-Ju Sons’ film Punk Eek will be on show in the project space of Galerie Ham­melehle und Ahrens. The unsual space, which is also devel­oped as an apart­ment, pro­vides the set­ting for Mr. NO Jae-Wons’ reflec­tions upon the ques­tion of who is his favourite clas­si­cal com­poser. On his way to a date, his thoughts develop in absurd scenes: he dis­cusses with the car radio and lis­tens to the indoc­tri­na­tion of chil­dren and trigger-happy men. Assem­bled doc­u­ments of Korea’s recent past form the back­drop against which the Korean man broods. On his jour­ney, the bound­aries of real­ity and sub­jec­tive pas­sion con­stantly become blurred. When arriv­ing at his des­ti­na­tion, the place where he meets the woman, he returns to his orig­i­nal answer, his reflec­tions thus fruit­less in the end. His answer remains untouched  by the force of time and dis­plays an infinte loop of rea­son­ing rather than the lin­ear devel­op­ment of a thought. The loop starts anew when his date asks him who his favourite painter is.
Enclosed in the mélange of pri­vate and open spaces inher­ent to this par­tic­u­lar gallery and directed by the use of pic­to­r­ial lan­guage, mon­tage, word and music by the Korean film­maker, the viewer faces the unspe­cific and super­fi­cial con­cept of  iden­tity for NO Jae-Won. His idea of it is placed within the dis­cur­sive con­text of a bil­dungs­bürg­er­tum (bour­geoisie) of the present day.
Kwang-Ju Sons’ filmed works pro­pa­gan­dize inter­tex­tu­al­ity as social prac­tice and the con­cept  of “iden­tity as unsta­ble, as alter­able, as pro­vi­sional or as rel­a­tive.“ The entrance area of Galerie Schmidt Mac­zollek, not actu­ally a part of the exhi­bi­tion space itself, involves entirely dif­fer­ent spa­tial con­di­tions. On site, Maya Hayuk will develop a mural for it. The radius of her action is large and ranges from design, draw­ing and fotog­ra­phy to ample murals; her works are closely related to her inter­est in col­lab­o­ra­tions. Cross-over influ­ences are vis­i­ble in her flow­ing move­ments and strong col­ors, and as plant worlds pour forth into a pop par­adise. In other images, the tan­gled lines of organic pat­terns or geo­met­ri­cal shapes spread out, giv­ing rhythm to the seem­ingly impetu­ous com­po­si­tions. Colours and shapes struc­ture per­cep­utal pat­terns that, nonethe­less, remain highly sub­jec­tive. The work Hayuk devel­ops in Cologne pays a kind of homage to Albert Hof­mann, the dis­cov­erer of the drug LSD. It demon­strates the play of colours and shapes that he might have expe­ri­enced in his first self-experiment: “Kalei­do­scopic, fan­tas­tic images surged in on me, alter­nat­ing, var­ie­gated, open­ing and then clos­ing them­selves in cir­cles and spi­rals, explod­ing in col­ored foun­tains, rear­rang­ing and hybridiz­ing them­selves in con­stant flux.“

In the frame­work of artist Gareth Moore’s ongo­ing project “Uncer­tain Pil­grim­age,“ which has lead the artist, since Sep­tem­ber, to var­i­ous loca­tions all over the world, he will be work­ing on-site in the anti­quar­ian book­shop at Galerie Daniel Buch­holz. It is often the small aspects and unno­ticed pecu­liar­i­ties that fas­ci­nate Moore and which urge him to explore them fur­ther. Tak­ing the book­store, which resem­bles a hid­den trea­sure, as a start­ing point for seek­ing out traces, he inter­weaves found footage with small ink draw­ings that bring book illus­tra­tions to mind. On site, as an “arche­ol­o­gist of the present day,“ he seeks to ques­tion space and time in rela­tion to sub­jec­tive per­cep­tions and col­lec­tive mem­ory. His trav­els play an impor­tant role as sto­ries from which he can draw, but they also incor­po­rate his per­sonal archive of expe­ri­ences and encoun­ters with (his­toric) peo­ple and objects.
In its dif­fer­ences, KölnShow2 mir­rors the wide spec­trum of con­tem­po­rary art and its high stan­dards. The decen­tral and col­lab­o­ra­tive ori­en­ta­tion of the exhi­bi­tion con­cept offers the 22 out­stand­ing artists a reflex­ive plat­form for the future-oriented claim: “…what will be told of today tomor­row.“ Whether the exhi­bi­tion will write his­tory or become a myth is only to be detected in the future, but it does take a stand—within the inter­na­tional art world as well as in Cologne.