• Sat 27 11 2021 / 4 – 5:30 pm •
Matters of Tactility: Revisiting Charlotte Posenenske

with ALEXIS LOWRY, ASTRID WEGE
moderated by DIRK HILDEBRANDT

By the late 1960s, Charlotte Posenenske was already creating works that were characterized by their seriality, reproducibility, and accessibility. Her objects and sculptures were and are affordable, interactive, tactile, unlimited, unsigned, and last but not least, playful and ephemeral. Her manifesto, published at the beginning of 1968, is as lucidly programmatic as it is an emphatic document of the looming break with art: “I find it difficult to come to terms with the fact that art cannot contribute anything to the solution of pressing social problems.” Consistently, this break followed in the same year at the height of her artistic productivity.

The question today is how – on a curatorial and artistic level – to approach an artist who theoretically defined her work so precisely, without falling prey to the fascination of this exact theoretical brilliance? How can she be placed into the context of the 1960s without obliterating her peculiarity? And why does she still and increasingly seem so “astonishingly contemporary” (Paul Maenz)?

Even before Posenenske’s so-called ‘rediscovery’ at documenta 12 (2007), Astrid Wege curated a retrospective of her work in 2005. Alexis Lowry is co-curator of the widely acclaimed exhibition Charlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress (2019) and is curating another exhibition on Posenenske as part of her residency at Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau. The talk will be moderated by art historian Dirk Hildebrandt.

Online via Zoom
Language: English
Free admission