Whimsies at Neuer Essener Kunstverein

One of the general challenges of group exhibitions is setting a substantial and/or formal bracket in which the positions shown can take place without losing their integrity. Commonly, works are used in an illustrative manner or reduced to partial aspects, which has once again increased in the last fifteen years due to the rise of the supra-instance ‘curator’. WHIMSIES understands itself as a question of how, in the context of a group exhibition, a scenario can be designed that respects the multidimensionality and complexity of the works presented without slipping entirely into arbitrariness. Or, in other words, how can the production and maintenance of hermeticism be organized in an environment that constantly demands explanations and discursive resolution? From our perspective, the lever for such an exhibition project can actually only be to exhibit reservedness, incidentally in full awareness of the contradictoriness of wanting to present on the one hand, but organizing and perpetuating hermeticism on the other.