Expect the Unexpected: New director Valérie Knoll starts off with a housewarming at Kunstverein Köln
Welcome Valérie! What tone will the new director of Kunstverein Köln set? Her first exhibition is all about new beginnings and paintings.
Starting off her time as the association’s head, Valérie (Gen X, Swiss) decided to tell a story in three episodes. The first one is a greeting for the space she is now responsible for. The Hoi in the show’s title borrows from a common greeting where the art historian is from.
Take off your shoes
Valérie permitted herself a little live laugh love moment getting all cozy in the new space. She divided the long windowed hallway diagonally, creating a section towards the busy Hahnenstraße outside and the calm courtyard inside the building. In fact, the presentation stretches across three rooms, although only this one feels relevant. As appropriate for moving in, there is a carpet with a car interior print, cleaning tools, and a vacuum cleaner by the collective BLESS (both Gen X, German) covered in denim for reasons I can’t possibly explain. There is some construction rubbish by the duo Fischli Weiss (both Baby Boomer, Swiss), some seats by Dozie Kanu (Millennial, American) and Barbara Zenner (Baby Boomer, German), curtains by Emil Michael Klein (Millennial, German), and lamps by Kaspar Müller (Millennial, Swiss). Valérie also left the painted steel columns by Marie Angeletti (Millennial, French) from the previous exhibition under former director Nikola Dietrich (Gen X, German).
Upon entering the room, I am stopped by Emil’s orange-red velvet curtain. My first thought? It’s giving bible. No, but seriously, I have to think of the curtain inside the Temple in Jerusalem that protected the Holy of Holies, the most sacred place no unprepared human could ever enter. So, am I about to enter a sanctuary? Should I take off my shoes, for I stand on holy ground? I will take them off anyway because I was raised in a Slavic household, though it doesn’t feel too inviting for a housewarming if you ask me. Alright, I’ll admit that it might also be a curtain offering a sneak peek of the stage…
There is such a sneak peek as I walk further: A green curtain resting on a window opens a thin slit for the large tree trunk right outside. Dozie’s concrete and car rim chair [ iii ] ( Dark ) (2022) positioned right in front of Emil’s curtain not only perfectly captures the vibe of post-war concrete architecture-loving and car-friendly Cologne (offensive side eye). It also makes me anxious. Matter of fact, it’s because of Wade Guyton (Gen X, American) that I am stressed about chairs in art spaces, but that’s a story for another time.
Relationship status: It’s complicated…
Valérie puts an emphasis on painting, which is tied up in a dramatic on-off relationship with the art world. Just as the first image that (probably) pops up in your mind is a framed picture when you hear art, there is an old running gag of what “real” art is and isn’t: A sculpture is what you accidentally bump into as you’re taking a step back to take a better look at a painting. Things suddenly changed in the 1820s when the first photograph ever was made. The art world started panicking and declared the end of art altogether. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t. Something similar happened over 100 years later in the 1950s when a bunch of young painters in New York City decided to not paint things anymore but to just paint. That’s when art critic Clement Greenberg (1909-1994, American) claimed that these kids would eventually kill painting by changing it forever. And for a couple of decades, it looked like he was right: The 70’s and 80’s were the era of conceptual art and performance art. Painting? I barely know her.
But ever since, painting has experienced its own Renaissance with new techniques, new ideas, and new concepts. So what can it offer today? I’d say it has become like a good thriller that knows how to work with plot twists.
Megan Francis Sullivan (Gen X, American) puts blown-out balloon animals on the wall. Wrong! Those are actually images of empty squished balloon animals. They look real, those must be photographs then, right? Wrong again! It’s all paint. A balloon we are used to seeing in 3D is made flat to the maximum. Megan uses noble oil paint to depict a cheap plastic object. I love the irony.
Right next to Megan, we have Alan Michael (Baby Boomer, British) bringing the highest dealer, MANGO, kisses from the office (2012) to the party, a photograph capturing corny china with an intricately designed glass filled with Gatorade-blue water splashing. Almost, but it’s actually a hyperrealistic painting. Cool concept, at first glance at least. But how is it different from hyperrealist paintings in the 70’s and 80’s? Remember I said that was the era of performance and concept art? Painting never really died.
Speaking of corny, Milena Büsch (Millennial, German) plays with magazine covers in her work Freizeit (2022). She chose 15 cover pages of German Boulevard press magazines and followed every single headline and form with her brush. The celebrity faces become caky, flat just like the story surrounding them. Their void eyes scream Ich bin ein Star! Holt mich hier raus! Milena’s patient, even painstaking process of copying the images through painting contrasts tedious artistic labor with rapid media production.
There is another large-scale work titled Courtesy dépendance, Brussels (2016). But this time, it’s a transit blanket disguised as a drip painting. Merlin Carpenter (Baby Boomer, British) often uses materials that you normally only need for logistics and packaging. The colored lint looks like splashes of color on a grey canvas. Thin white threads organize the space vertically in tight sections. An illusion of pigment on the most underrated texture. So, you get the picture.
You can stop by for the housewarming Hoi Köln Part I: Welcoming the Space, until November 19, 2023, at Kölnischer Kunstverein.
Kölnischer Kunstverein
Hahnenstrasse 6
50667 Köln
Open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 am to 6 pm
Website
Note to yourself: Bring salt and bread. So how do you like Valérie’s new place? Let me know with a like or a comment. And send the party invite to a friend :)
See you soon!!!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic