WÄNDE I WALLS

We run into brick walls, we bounce off the walls, we climb up the walls, fell walled-in and we see the writing on the walls. In all these idioms, walls stand for barriers that affect not only the field of vision but also the way people think, move, and act. We are constantly surrounded by walls. They make us feel secure, constrained, or excluded, and yet we rarely perceive them in their far-reaching contexts.

The exhibition WÄNDE I WALLS brings together works from 1966 to today, in which the spatial boundary of the wall is thematized on various levels of meaning. In their works, artists such as Monica Bonvicini and Yoko Ono highlight the most fundamental function of walls—that of inclusion and exclusion. On the one hand, walls stand for the protection of the individual, while on the other hand they can confine and deny access. As a space-creating architectural element, they help to determine our living spaces and are involved in identity-forming processes. Artists such as Ernst Caramelle and Bruce Nauman visualize this by understanding the wall as a reacting counterpart or by giving it human characteristics. In turn, works by Jeewi Lee and Sol LeWitt, among others, address the so-called white cube as a common form of presentation of modern and contemporary art. They demonstrate how the white walls of the exhibition space influence the effect and perception of art.

The international loans and the works created specifically for the exhibition go beyond the media of wall painting and drawing to include performative and sculptural approaches, as well as installations. In their focus on spatial experience, they make it clear that—although we increasingly find ourselves moving in digital worlds—it is always the real spaces surrounding us that decisively shape our behavior.