Sprengel Museum Hannover
Partner museum of the Blickachsen 14 exhibition
Since the donation of Bernhard and Margrit Sprengel’s high-quality collection of classical modernism in 1969 and its opening in 1979, the Sprengel Museum Hannover has been distinguished by an architecture by Trint and Quast that connects the inside with the outside. Continuous areas of cobblestone paving indicate a public space, which is also reflected in the names of structural elements such as “Museum Street”. The sculpture garden, which will in the future contain a large installation by James Turrell, was initially a stepped courtyard imitating the hills of a landscape, in which sculptures by Jean Arp or George Rickey allowed the contemplation of art to continue out-side. With the placing of Alexander Calder’s monumental sculpture “Le Hellebardier” (1971) on the banks of the Maschsee – donated by Bernhard Sprengel – the continuity of museum and urban space becomes visible. Finally, sculptures by Erich Hauser (1983-2015) and Alice Aycock (from 2015) mark the entrances to the museum.
Hannover is also a city that as early as the 1970s invested in art in the public space with its “Street Art Experiment”. Supplemented by later programmes such as the Sculpture Mile, the “Busstops” and the Expo 2000 art programme, the inventory of art in the city grew considerably. Today, Hannover has a large number of important sculptures, such as the famous “Nanas” (1974) by Niki de Saint Phalle and other works by international artists such as Henry Moore, Kenneth Snelson and Sanford Wurmfeld, which characterize the cityscape.
Against the backdrop of this museum context and of our curatorial experience of art in public spaces, we were delighted to accept the invitation from the Blickachsen Foundation to be a partner institution this year. I had worked with some of the Blickachsen participants in the “skulptur projekte münster 07”, others had already been represented in “Made in Germany” at the Sprengel Museum Hannover. We are delighted to be able to show these artists again at Blickachsen, where newly created works and others that have already been exhibited elsewhere create new effects and perspectives in the historic parks of the spa town.
Curating within the successful Blickachsen format is a special challenge given the precarious situation of artists and a demanding and media-oriented audience. It is becoming increasingly difficult to open up spaces for a process-based or more restrained art. It is therefore all the more gratifying that, thanks in particular to the great commitment of the artists, Blickachsen 14 has been able to realize its own points of focus. A particular emphasis of this exhibition is on the – still underrepresented – artistic achievements of women sculptors. With works by women artists from different generations, from Simone Fattal to Elizabeth Jaeger and Thea Moeller, the spectrum and diversity of sculpture today becomes apparent. In addition, sculptures by Hans Josephsohn and Gary Kuehn, for example, show how over long periods of time bodies of work were created on the fringes of the dominant trends, which have been rediscovered and appreciated as revisions of art history. Among the more recent positions, figurative sculptures displaying new surreal elements as well as contemporary social references stand out, where piercing, mobile phone culture and equestrian figures derived from fantasy and dystopia are invoked. Ephemeral works create new sculptural possibilities that respond to the current fragile global situation; conflicts are formulated in linguistic terms. In this international selection of artists from eight nations, a picture of what sculpture can be today becomes tangible.
Carina Plath
Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Sprengel Museum Hannover
Co-curator of the Blickachsen 14 exhibition
