AWAITING YOU AT SCHIRN 2018

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) is acknowledged today as one of the most significant painters of the 20th century. More than 30 years after Basquiat’s last exhibition in Germany, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting a major survey devoted to this American artist, organized in collaboration with the Barbican Centre, London. In the late 1970s, Basquiat teamed up with Al Diaz in New York to write graffiti statements across the city under the pseudonym SAMO©. Soon he was making drawings in his own blood, collaging baseball cards and postcards and painting on clothing, doors, furniture and on enormous improvised canvases. Basquiat collaborated with many artists of his time, most famously Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. Having come of age in the post-punk underground scene in Lower Manhattan, Basquiat conquered the art world and gained widespread international recognition, becoming the youngest artist ever to participate in the documenta in Kassel in 1982. Featuring more than 100 works, the exhibition is the first to focus on Basquiat’s relationship to music, text, film and television, placing his work within a broader cultural context.

The award-winning video and installation artist Neïl Beloufa will be realising a unique project by transforming the Schirn into a stage. He will create sculptural stages in various spaces outside the classic exhibition areas of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in which he presents his most recent cinematic works. Film constitutes the focus and point of departure in Beloufa’s oeuvre. He also uses its production parameters, such as set, lighting, editing, and perspective, for the development of his pictures, sculptures, and installations. His works are collaborative, with the aim of eliminating the singular position and perspective of the author. Fiction and reality are fused in Beloufa’s filmic narratives.

The SCHIRN is dedicating an extensive thematic exhibition to this recurring fascination of wilderness and presents works of art from 1900 to the present. In times in which the blank spaces on the world map have largely disappeared and an “untouched natural state” virtually only exists in the form of areas designated as nature reserves, the “wilderness” is returning in art. The search for the last open places, the expedition as an artistic medium, and posthuman visions of a world devoid of people characterize the works of many contemporary artists alongside the renegotiation of the relationship between individual and beast. With important works by some 30 artists, it does not only shed light on the phenomenon of the wilderness in terms of iconography but also shows it as a principle and motor of artistic creative work. Artists have repeatedly been drawn to that which is wild, untamed, uncultivated since the beginning of the aesthetic modern age. The “wilderness” has always also served as a projection surface for anything that was different and foreign, for the longing for a primordial life beyond the boundaries of civilization.

For more than five years, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt has served as a forum for national and international filmmakers and video artists. Under the heading Double Feature, they present a work from their own oeuvre, followed by their favorite film. On the last Monday of every month and in conversation with the curators Katharina Dohm, Matthias Ulrich and guest curators, the invited artists provide extensive insight into their creative work, especially into their interest in filmDouble Feature sees itself as a platform for different trends and forms of expression in film and video art production. Film and video works by over 50 artists have already been shown in the Schirn. In 2018 the public can look forward to contributions by artists including Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Gery Georgieva, Holly Zausner, and Amie Siegel. The videos and conversations with artists who have already participated can be accessed under the title Double Feature Conversations via the Schirn’s YouTube channel.