STORAGE SPACE at TICK TACK is an unusual presentation of a public museum collection, curated by museum director Nico Anklam and curatorial assistant Pauline Ganns. Over the course of eight weeks, eight different constellations of works from the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen will appear on the top floor of TICK TACK. While the ground floor functions as both an actual storage space and a representation of one, the top floor will showcase a new arrangement of 29 artists in total from the collection each week. With a collection encompassing nearly 5,000 works, this presentation offers just a glimpse into the Kunsthalle’s holdings, where world-famous names and younger artists are presented side by side. Some of the exhibited works entered the collection as early as the 1950s, while others were acquired as recently as this year. Many of these pieces appear together for the first time in
STORAGE SPACE.
This presentation reflects on the complexities and contradictions of gathering art objects in museums, ostensibly for eternity. The larger the collection grows, the fewer opportunities arise to display the works. The longer objects remain in storage, the more care they require to keep them in a condition suitable for exhibition. Ultimately, the show in Antwerp also explores the life of art objects as one of sometimes countless items on shelves, in crates, or boxes, waiting to be seen again by an audience. Moreover, the collection’s acquisition policy in the past lacked diversity, with most artists being white men from the former “West.” This has recently begun to change, marking only the beginning of rethinking what it means to be a public collection in a modern and contemporary art museum like Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, founded in 1950.
All the works in STORAGE SPACE have two life cycles during their time at TICK TACK from September to November 2024: first, as a “Schaulager” object visible from the street through a large glass front, and second, as part of the weekly exhibitions upstairs. Two exceptions are Otto Piene’s “Sleepwalker” (1966/67, acquired 1969) and Heinz Mack’s “Hommage à Yves Klein” (1965, acquired 1966), which will be on view throughout the entire period in the basement. These two icons of kinetic and light art, referencing the previous collection show with a ZERO room at the 1,000 sqm Kunsthalle Recklinghausen in 2021, serve as a foundational presence for everything happening above them.
The evolving wall colors—from dark black, to “bunker” grey, to white—also reference recent exhibition history at Recklinghausen, where the Kunsthalle is housed in a former WWII above-ground bunker. STORAGE SPACE is presented on the occasion of ROKADE, an exhibition exchange project in which TICK TACK and Kunsthalle Recklinghausen swap their locations for the fall of 2024.
Curated by Nico Anklam Curatorial assistant: Pauline Ganns Communication and research: Kerstin Weber
STORAGE SPACE happens on the occasion of ROKADE: TICK TACK and Kunsthalle Recklinghausen swap sites in the fall of 2024.
