AKADEMIE

Anarchistische Gummizelle (AGZ), Archiv Katharina Fritsch, GOOD FOREVER, Vivian Greven, Volker Hermes, Im Goldenen, Taisiya Ivanova, Dietmar Lutz, Malkasten-Archiv 2000/2002 , Felicitas Rohden, Fabian Ruzicka and Simone Curaj, Rosa Sarholz, Marcel Stahn, Daehyun Wi

Special Guests:
21 October – 09 November: Arjan Jarry
10 November – 30 November: Laura Catania
01 December – 14 December: Fabian Heitzhausen & Aaron Bobrow
15 December – 11 January: Lukas Langguth
12 January – 07 February: PHANTOM KINO BALLETT

“To learn to make art…means primarily to acquire the ability to live among other people who also make art or have to do with art. ” (Jan Verwoert)

Visual art is an academic system. There are many masters students but only a few autodidacts and hardly any people switching careers into the field. It is then no wonder that art education is shrouded in as many mysteries as art itself: Can one even “teach” the ability to add something truly novel to history? What type of institution could facilitate such a process?

The art academy is a community of artists with different experiences. The exchange between individual positions forms the core of artists’ education.  On one hand, the community is the backdrop that serves as a source of inspiration. On the other, it is also that which the artist must distinguish themself from in order to be perceived as occupying an individual position. Her one finds an idyll and, at the same time, a space for competition and struggle, group-formation and retreat. The academy both separates and binds together. Everyone is there— every man for himself. And whoever doesn’t belong will never make their way in.

The academy is a well-protected archive, newly arranged everyday. It lives on fleeting moments and encounters that are difficult to put into words or even to communicate; on events, about which there is little to say beyond the fact that they took place; on works that are made for eternity.

The exhibition at KIT grapples with numerous instances of these complex oppositions in the academy environment while also offering an overview of different positions and generations. In cooperation with the artists of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, an attempt was made to reflect the many facets of life and work at the academy. The show gathers students and graduates, individual projects and collaborative formats. A particular focus was placed on the handling of documentation and archival materials. Here, the exhibition space itself takes on an academic character. Some artists were invited to develop special vitrines, which will be used for changing presentations over the course of the exhibition. The dynamic of teaching and learning characteristic this particular university will thus be transported into the context of an exhibition.

The exhibition was conceived by Gertrud Peters and Elmar Hermann and resulted as part of the collaboration with the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf for their fiftieth anniversary at Grabbeplatz.