Avatar and Atavism
Outside the AvantGarde
22.8. – 8.11.2015

Through juxtaposition and combination, the exhibition Avatar and Avatism: Outside the Avant-Garde reveals a phenomenon archetypically anchored in the art of the 1980s with the surprising appearance of heads, hands, and other body parts. This rebellion against the achievements of modernism—abstraction and conceptualism—includes well-known representatives of Western art from various generations. Since the transavantgarde movement around 1980, animistic elements have emerged in the form of the “dismembered body” (Jacques Lacan), the animal as an alter ego, and other codes of “savage thought” (Claude Lévi-Strauss). The close ties to outsider art cannot be overlooked. This phenomenon continues today, even if it has often been interpreted in different ways. 



The exhibition features renowned artists with works between obsession, narrative, and the grotesque, which became possible in the wake of the postmodern turn after 1978. The first room with works from the “savage” decade features artists such Francesco Clemente, Walter Dahn, Martin Disler, and Jiří Georg Dokoupil. These are followed by works from Sieg­fried Anzin­ger alongside artists such as An­to­ni­us Hö­ckel­mann and Al­fred Klinkan. In a kind of animistic chain, the following decade saw the invention of new avatars in the work of Franz West, Ro­se­ma­rie Tro­ckel, Gün­ther Förg, Tho­mas Schüt­te, and Mi­ke Kel­ley, such as West’s lemurs, Förg’s masks, and Tro­ckel’s “Balaclava” knit face masks. What completely legitimizes these archetypes and only makes them truly visible today is the fact that these avatars are from various individuals from previous generations, led by Loui­se Bour­geois and Ma­ria Lass­nig with Ge­org Ba­se­litz and Bru­ce Nau­man, who demonstrated a similar attitude during the same period.

Well-known artists such as Sa­rah Lu­cas, Da­na Schutz, Kai Alt­hoff, Tho­mas Zipp, An­dré But­zer, An­dy Ho­pe 1930, and John Bock continued this tendency after 2000, each interpreting it in their own way. Tal R and Jo­na­than Mee­se have reconstructed their castle installation MOR from 2005. The avatars of the young generation today combine with readymades and reflection on artistic media, as exemplified by the work of Neїl Beloufa and Eva Kot’átková.

The works by “outsider artists” were compiled by Pia Witzmann and Veit Loers directly from institutions in North Rhine-Westphalia and Italy. These include pieces by Ge­org Brink­schul­te, Karl Burk­hard, Giu­sep­pe Cur­to, Gior­gio Do­ri­go, Wil­ma Sa­vio, Al­fred Stief, and others from the Kunst­haus Kan­nen in Müns­ter, Kunst-Pra­xis Soest e.V., MALzeit­ler in Du­is­burg, and ULSS 2 Felt­re in Italy. They offer examples of the constant omnipresence of a reservoir of images inherent in all people, which only seldom reach the outside world against our prevailing rationality.

The exhibition was curated by Veit Lo­ers with Gre­gor Jan­sen and Pia Witz­mann. In Oc­to­ber and early No­vem­ber 2015 it will overlap with Kas­per Kö­nig and Falk Wolf’s exhibition The Shadow of the Avant-Garde at the Mu­se­um Folk­wang in Essen.