Kunstgewerbemuseum: Artists' Conquest

Artists' Conquest. Inside – Outside

"Artists' Conquest" - Artists conquer Pillnitz Palace and Parc

This is the motto of the exhibition series with which the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Staatliche Schlösser, Burgen und Gärten Sachsen invite visitors to unexpected encounters in this venerable cultural monument. In an affectionate, ironic, provocative, commenting or reflective way, the confrontation of historical place and contemporary art position makes clear how much history and the present are connected.

Exhibition Site Schloss Pillnitz

DATES 28/07/2022—31/10/2022

With the interplay of interior and exterior space, the work "Inside-Outside" by Chiharu Shiota already touches on the theme to which other works from the Schenkung Sammlung Hoffmann at Pillnitz Palace and Park respond. The individual positions question the attributions of inside and outside, of personal and public space, of the observer and the observed. In the reflection of the artistic works, the gaze sharpens and falls again on the supposedly familiar. It is astonishing how this allows new perspectives to be adopted and a familiar place to come up with surprises. "Artists' Conquest" aims to open up new ways of seeing and thinking, and to question established ones. Art and culture inspire this magic.

Chiharu Shiota collected the components for the large installation "Inside-Outside" at construction sites in eastern Berlin. The old wooden windows, which were built into a new, fantastic architecture, were replaced en masse with plastic frames in the post-reunification period; a sign of upswing and modernization. As symbols of permeable boundaries between interior and exterior space, they act as witnesses to the life that once surrounded them. In the baroque main hall of the Wasserpalais, the contemporary work not only corresponds with the historical architectural layout of this building complex, whose window frontage opens up and stages the view of the Elbe flowing behind it. It also refers to the interplay of nature and culture as one of the guiding design principles of the complex park.

Installation aus verschiedenen Fenstern in einem hohen Raum — **Chiharu Shiota, Inside-Outside, 2009**

The sweets laid out as a shiny field are part of the so-called "Candy Works" by artist Félix González-Torres. In the interplay with the magnificent main hall of the Bergpalais, they appear as a contemporary response to baroque opulence. But at the same time they break the attitude of the courtly and elitist: For the sweets may be eaten. The aspect of participation is central to González-Torres. Thus his work is completed in its disappearance, or more precisely in its incorporation by countless visitors. In the local context, the installation responds to the once courtly rooms and symbolizes the baroque imagery of splendor and transience.

**Felix Gonzalez Torres, „Untitled“ (Placebo – Landscape – For Roni), 1993**

With her solid sculpture made of glass, Roni Horn succeeds in giving changeability an artistic form. Transparent and reflective at the same time, "Deeps and Skies" plays with the dualities of heaviness and lightness, solidity and fluidity, inside and outside. While the object on the inside reveals a view of a seemingly endless depth, it simultaneously allows one to contemplate the dome of the hall and the play of clouds high above. Like the apparent surface of a body of water, the appearance of the work changes depending on the natural lighting conditions and the position of the viewer in the room. In her audio work "Saying Water," written about the London Thames, the artist asks us to interrogate our own relationship to the nature of water, developing a powerful vocabulary about the universal properties of water, its physical, sensual, unfathomable, and sometimes tantalizingly threatening qualities.

In an endless flow of immense numbers of years, On Kawara allows us to meditate on timelessness and infinity in the seclusion of the palmen house. The reading to be heard is based on his chronicles "One Million Years (Past + Future)": volumes of books written on typewriter, containing the dates from 998031 BC to 1001995 AD. The attempt, made anew with each monotonously recited year number, to chronologically order time, to objectify it and to make it measurable as a measure of our existence, fails, however, because of the relativity of the human relationship to time. While a century passes us by in a few minutes and the barely possible thought is directed to a million years past and a million years future, the work emphasizes the abstract character of time and lets relations of history fade away.

In his works, Richard Long turns observations of nature made on his hikes into art. Thus, he wanders through landscapes for days and weeks at a time, setting himself tasks such as following a riverbank or picking up and placing stones at specific intervals along his path. In this way, he expands his sculptural work to include aspects of performance and conceptual art. Again and again he uses circular and spiral forms, which he shapes with natural materials such as stone or clay. The sculpture is not an attempt at a representation of nature, but is an aesthetic document of Long's engagement with nature and poetic evocation of its beauty and sublimity as it resonates in the English pavilion.

**Richard Long, Small Napoli Spiral, 1984**

A crystal-clear, perfect-looking sphere lies on a flat pedestal. It appears to be made of glass or crystal, but it is made of ice; it melts and fades away. In her works, Marijke van Warmerdam deals with simple things and their observation. She is best known for her short films, which on continuous loop often provide an unexpected perspective on the beauty of life's little things. It's a similar story with the work "Ice Sphere". The work changes incessantly. Nevertheless, patience and attention are needed to perceive this constant transformation. In harmony with the palm house as a capsule with its own climatic conditions, van Warmerdam's "Ice Sphere" addresses questions of sustainability, effort and waste, means and ends, in a clear and at the same time multi-layered way.