The toxic building – How Jan Glisman turned the deconstruction of the Deutsche Welle towers into a multimedia art project

All Jan Glisman really wanted to do was to "just" document a spectacular event in Cologne: The demolition of all three parts of the 138-metre-high Deutsche Welle broadcasting tower, the third-highest building in the city. The funding had been approved, the plans worked out, but then - everything turned out quite differently. The risk to the broadcasting operations of Deutschlandfunk, which is connected by a common foundation slab, and the spread of asbestos fibres feared by residents in the neighbourhood had prevented the blasting. “Blasting” therefore became "deconstruction". A process that was to extend over a total of five years and challenged Glisman to document precisely that period. Huge numbers of photos, video material and drawings were initially created without any concrete idea of what was to happen with them ...

Wilko Austermann – Focus on the curator, Episode 3 of the series “Behind the Arts”

Anybody travelling in the Rhineland and visiting the Upcoming artists exhibitions, is very likely to have come across his name. Whether the Antichambre in the Hotel Friends in Düsseldorf, Malkastenpark, MMIII Kunstverein Mönchengladbach, Quartier am Hafen Köln or Krefeld Kunstverein, you will find: Curated by Wilko Austermann. What exactly does a curator do? Or, to put it more accurately: How does Wilko Austermann personally define his responsibilities? We meet at MMIII Kunstverein Mönchengladbach, where he uses the example of Yoana Tuzharova's Plasma soil exhibition, that he conceptualised, to talk about his main ideas. It becomes immediately obvious, that here we have a classic case of being able to differentiate between profession and vocation.
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“But, initially, it does not claim to be anything, just itself.” Gregor Russ through a photostory portrait …

Dusseldorf. You want the most essential aspects of an artistic work visualized through a photostory? Say no more – on the occasion of Gregor Russ’ exhibition AS IF … Guaranteed reading time of less than two minutes ?

Alex Grein – Ephemeral: photographically “exposed“

Cell phone holders, blocks of ice, dissecting tables, frozen matter in a freezer, viscous matter in canisters, photographs in deformed frames, and butterflies on video screens. Although I haven’t seen them, the mere listing makes me more than curious about this exhibition. How can we connect all of these, such different works? A first idea is conveyed in the exhibition title „d a  u   e    r“ ...
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Banz & Bowinkel – Digital shadows of real images

Admittedly, I had successfully managed to sneak by the world of Immersive art without paying attention, until I visited this exhibition. The terminology alone, with its abbreviations, seemed scary to me: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Bots, and now Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) ... Too technical. Too complicated. Or so I thought until I met Giulia Bowinkel and Friedemann Banz – THE artist duo that has been shaping the development of this young art form since its beginnings.

Anke Loots – Everything in its right place. Walkaround with Anke Loots

Cape Town. I had no idea that the THK Gallery is an exhibition venue founded only eight months ago by – of all people – an inhabitant of Cologne, a person, therefore who just like myself, is from the Rhineland. Initially, it was the cover of the current first thursdays cape town* tour guide, which took me to Waterkant Street and thus to Frank Schönau and the artist, whose self-portrait graces the cover of the guide. It is the first solo exhibition of the 27-year-old Anke Loots, a student of the photographic artist Pieter Hugo, with whom – coincidentally ? - I also have an appointment at the end of the week ...

A 4 Foundation – An innovative art lab

Cape Town. There are academies, galleries, museums, art exhibitions, festivals ... and now also a laboratory to experiment with art. At the initiative of the collector Wendy Fisher and her curator Josh Ginsburg, an innovative institute, the A4 Foundation, came into being in 2017, right in the middle of Cape Town. Here, space – literally and figuratively - was created for the passionate experimentation with art, new forms of art funding and communication of art and, particularly, for trying things out. Today, in our conversation with Josh Ginsburg, we hear some more about it ...

Norval Foundation – A museum as a leisure destination

Cape Town. With the opening of the Norval Foundation, another architectural and conceptual highlight for culture buffs was created in Cape Town. The opening of the Zeitz Mocaa Museum as recently as last year drew international attention for the first time to as yet little known African contemporary art. This led to the creation of another space which feels committed to exploring and presenting the African art of the 20th and 21st century ...