Artist: KORPYS/LÖFFLER
Exhibition title: Personen Institutionen Objekte Sachen
Curated by: Christina Lehnert
Curatorial Assistant: Nele Kaczmarek
Venue: Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany
Date: March 3 – May 13, 2018
Photography: Stefan Stark / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig
The comprehensive exhibition Personen Institutionen Objekte Sachen presents works spanning two decades of the artistic duo Korpys/Löffler’s career. In their artistic practice, Korpys/Löffler deal with the way architectures, representatives, and objects mediate and secretly produce power structures. The artists are interested in executive bodies that act behind the scenes, such as the Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police Office) or the Bundesnachrichtendienst (German Federal Intelligence Service) as well as the police, the Pope, or the US president as personified authorities. They touch on current controversies over consumer protection and excessive data accumulation, individual liberty and state security as well as questions about the visual politics employed by government apparatuses and the media. Korpys/Löffler observe the phenotypes of power while focusing on details and peripheries.
Often filming undercover, Korpys/Löffler adopt the perspectives of journalists, detectives, or voyeurs. Instead of linear narratives, they foreground associative connections between different aspects of the current or historical event under examination. At the same time, these film-based works are often embedded in installations and supplemented with photographs and drawings.
In response to the specific space of the Kunstverein, Korpys/Löffler will exchange the function of individual rooms in the Villa Salve Hospes. Their strategy of making the sidelines visible has been transferred onto the exhibition space. Transformation, but also deconstruction, become productive processes when existing relationships not only change, but—as in the work series Geist (2012-2014)—pre-existing works by other artists are also carried over into their own work in a distilled form.
Alongside the exhibition, a publication is released in cooperation with the Kunsthalle Tübingen and the Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund with texts by Dr. Sabine Maria Schmidt, Dr. Holger Kube Ventura, and Steffen Zillig, among others. With a different emphasis each time, the works will first be shown in the Kunsthalle Tübingen, then at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, and finally at the Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund towards the end of 2018.
Andree Korpys (b. 1966) and Markus Löffler (b. 1963) live and work in Bremen and have worked together on collaborative projects for about 25 years. Their works have been presented in group exhibitions within the framework of the Berlin Biennale (2016), as well as at the ZKM Karlsruhe (2015), the KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin (2015), the Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf
(2014), and the Marta Herford (2013). In 2007, the Vienna Secession mounted a large-scale solo exhibition of their works. After their guest professorship at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg (2007-2009), Korpys/Löffler have been professors for “artistic spatial and bodily concepts” at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen since 2009.
Korpys/Löffler, Keller, 2018, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2018
Korpys/Löffler,Verwisch die Spuren, 2016, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2018
Korpys/Löffler,Verwisch die Spuren, 2016, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2018
Korpys/Löffler, Geist, 2012-14, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2018
Korpys/Löffler, Geist, 2012-14, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2018
Korpys/Löffler, Keller, 2018, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2018
Korpys/Löffler, Personen, Institutionen, Objekte, Sachen, 2014, Installation view Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2018
Kornelia Hoffmann, Psychogrạmm, Träger mit Gastgeschenk, gesammelt 02/2018, Bremen, TOR 25, Gästezimmer Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2018