Opening & Book Launch: Friday, September 14, 2012, 6.30pm
7pm – Welcoming Speech: Joerg Schumacher, Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg
11pm – Afterparty, Self Service Open Art Space, Eberhardstraße 6a

Künstlerhaus Stuttgart’s fall program starts with a joint collaboration with Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, presenting the first institutional solo exhibition from Brazilian artist Pedro Wirz (born 1981) who is the winner of the Peter-Hans-Hofschneider-Prize 2011, which is awarded every two years by Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg to foster art academy graduates and young talented artists who have a connection to Stuttgart.

Based in Basel, Wirz has been part of the Stuttgart art scene, and contributed to many projects and discussions during his study year at the Art Academy in Stuttgart (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart). Pedro Wirz investigates how collaboration and participation create alternative ways of exhibition making, as well as how collective creativity and the issue of authorship can be balanced for investigating critical forms of experimental processes.

Wirz was awarded the prestigious Peter-Hans-Hofschneider-Prize 2011 by jury members: Stefan Heidenreich (Berlin based critic and theoretician), Agnes Märkel (artist and recipient of the Peter-Hans-Hofschneider-Prize 2008) and Adnan Yildiz (artistic director, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart). The Peter-Hans-Hofschneider-Prize kindly provides an exhibition budget, honorarium and the production of a publication by Pedro Wirz.

Quote from the jury statement:
“Wirz develops an artistic approach that combines diverse practices and an interaction with them, such as performative sculpture, curating, editing, dealing with certain references and questions of art history. His work is characterized by humorous and introspective language. It is powerful because it is not interested in conventional forms of artistic production, but alternative ways of participation and contribution.”

The exhibition “Not the New, Not the Old, But the Necessary.“ operates at different levels of conceptual approaches such as abstraction, participation and curation. Wirz continues his series of “Curated Sculptures” for this exhibition by inviting John Beeson, Giovanni Carmine, Carson Chan and Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel to curate a selection of artworks out of a list of 243 artworks from the artists that Pedro Wirz collaborated in the last four years.

As the main conceptual ground for the show, the traditional art form from Japanese culture, Origami – which is based on folding paper – is used not only as an artistic technique but also as an expression of abstraction in Wirz’s show. Reconsidering the impact of Japanese culture in Brazil, and bringing along his childhood experience with Origami, Wirz aims to create a social network of ideas, images, and practices in the form of an exhibition and an artist book.

Quoting from one of his life-time inspirations, Sol LeWitt, Pedro Wirz crystallizes the fundamental aspect of his methodological strategy. “Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.”, and “The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.”. Wirz investigates the possibilities of exchanging roles and positions in the art world, demanding curiosity to experiment on the basis of the main question: What happens when we shift South to West, artist to curator, and paper to sculpture or vice versa?

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An exhibition supported by the Peter-Hans-Hofschneider-Prize 2011, in collaboration with Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg.

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Image: Pedro Wirz, Pattern #2, 2012

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CRITICAL VOICES
Dialogues between Stuttgart and Munich

May-November 2012

with:
Ana Hoffner
Marta Popivoda
Lars Bang Larsen
Jean-Charles Massera
Anselm Franke

Experimenting with circulation of knowledge, image transfer, mobility, time management, contextuality, and the constitution of a given (local) audience, “Critical Voices” aims at creating a dynamic discursive environment in two neighboring German cities, Stuttgart and Munich. The project is a collaboration, yet reflects each location’s specific programming policy: At Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, “Critical Voices” complements a series of solo projects entitled ARTISTIC DIALOGUES and at PLATFORM3 it is part of this year’s engagement with the “spectator”.

“Critical Voices” will investigate how diverse critical practices approach an audience and how the presence of the spectator, the temporality of his/her gaze and potentiality of his/her participation shape artistic and curatorial content. Each keynote speaker will present his/her work in both cities, thus playing with the different local contexts in Stuttgart and Munich: The initial encounter with a given audience in the first city will set a point of reference for the guest speaker’s presentation in the second city.

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PROGRAM:

Wednesday, May 16, 8pm, PLATFORM3
Thursday, May 17, 8pm, KÜNSTLERHAUS
ANA HOFFNER: Wissensdramatisierung (performance)

Wednesday, June 20, 7.30pm, PLATFORM3
Thursday, June 21, 7.30pm, KÜNSTLERHAUS
MARTA POPIVODA: illegal_cinema (film screening + discussion)

Wednesday, September 26, 7.30pm, PLATFORM3
Thursday, September 27, 7.30pm, KÜNSTLERHAUS
LARS BANG LARSEN: Histories of the Present – Presentness of History (lecture)

Tuesday, October 9, 7.30pm, PLATFORM3
Thursday, October 11, 7.30pm, KÜNSTLERHAUS
JEAN-CHARLES MASSERA: I Am, You Are, We Are Europa (A Dialogue Between me, Myself and iTunes) (Performance based on the publication “We Are L’Europe”, edited by Verticales, Gallimard Paris 2009)

Wednesday, November 21, 7.30pm, PLATFORM3
Thursday, November 22, 7.30pm, KÜNSTLERHAUS
ANSELM FRANKE: Figure-Ground (lecture)

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DOWNLOAD: Flyer CRITICAL VOICES (German/English, pdf)

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In cooperation between PLATFORM3 and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart.

Project spaces for contemporary art
Kistlerhofstr. 70 (Haus 60/3rd floor)
D-81379 München
Tel: +49-89-324 9009-0
www.platform3.de

directions: station Aidenbachstrasse U3, busses 51/53/136/N40, 10 minutes from Sendlinger Tor

PLATFORM3 is supported by

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CRITICAL VOICES is supported by