Contemporary positions on wall painting
23.6.-23.7.2023
With works in situ by:
ABCDEF / Anders Reventlov / Benedikt Rugar / Cannolo & thwrb3at / Collettivo FX mit Alida, Ayse, Jasmin, Johat, Luca, Michrat und Yara / Daniel von Hössle / Delta / Diamonds mit Alida, Awa, Felix, Jasmin, Johat, Kevena, Luca, Michrat, Rudy, Tinna, Yara und Yusra / Dominik / Dorian Winkler / Il-Jin Atem Choi / KJ263 / Lars Breuer / Konstantin Kipfmüller / Moses & Taps / Noa Vetter / Oguz Sen / Ralph Roelse / Ramon Keimig / Rushy Diamond / Sonja Rychkova / Valerie Sietzy
Mural painting stands at the beginning of all artistic production and looks back on a history of more than 40,000 years. DIAMANT Offenbach / Museum of Urban Culture will show actual positions on the subject with the WALLSHOW from mid-June 2023. In the future bicycle parking garage of the city of Offenbach in the heart of the city, more than 20 international and regional artists and artist groups will present murals made on site. A spectacular panorama of contemporary, mural painting develops on seamlessly lined-up wall surfaces. The WALLSHOW unites positions from the fields of fine art and from the streets in a continuous spatial structure.
In 2015, the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn hosted the show “Bundeskunsthall Of Fame”, a sensational festival of graffiti and street-related art. There, real murals by international graffiti artists were painted indoors on a real-life ‘concrete’ backdrop recycled from the previous Karl Lagerfeld exhibition. Robert Kaltenhäuser, one of the curators of this project, together with Heiner Blum and Jan Lotter from DIAMANT /Museum of Urban Culture and the HfG Offenbach, has now co-developed a kind of continuation of this action for Offenbach. The architecture of the Offenbach bicycle parking garage offers the unique opportunity to repeat in real what was sketched at that time. Some artists from the Bundeskunsthalle will be invited again and brought into dialogue with new, current positions.
Graffiti, street-related and visual art are usually negotiated in separate spaces. With its top-class program of the past months, DIAMANT Offenbach showed that the mutual inspiration between visual art and the artistic happenings of the street is a big, current topic of both scenes. Here, the focus is deliberately on radical artistic research rather than the commercial decoration often mistakenly referred to as “street art.” Many of the most interesting developments in current free urban wall design refer to or make use of art history, painting or conceptual art. They rehearse the forward-looking recourse to democratic ideals of a genuine public sphere and a (sub)cultural modernity with the demanding ethos of aesthetic disruption. At the same time, visual artists show themselves inspired by the language of the street, by everyday life, by situational aesthetics and the public space. WALLSHOW brings both artistic approaches into a common communicating space.
Exhibitions and the presence of self-authorized art in urban space are usually of very limited duration. However, the walls of the WALLSHOW will not be painted over after the exhibition ends, but will become seamlessly a living public museum of current mural painting and the discursive backdrop of the new bicycle parking garage of the city of Offenbach. When entering the bicycle garage, one can perceive the wall art dynamically and multi-perspectively, as otherwise only from the window of the S-Bahn. Urban art has always been at home in the nooks and crannies of urban utilitarian architecture. The semi-public space of the bicycle parking garage as an interface and transit point offers an ideal environment for this kind of presentation, where different worlds of art and life meet.
The WALLSHOW will be accompanied by two WALLSHOW Talks curated and moderated by Robert Kaltenhäuser.
Both the Diamonds and Colletivo FX worked with students from our Diamantenschule, a cooperation between DIAMANT and Offenbach’s Rudolf Koch Gymnasium.
The WALLSHOW is generously supported by the WasE group of companies, Quarterbeck Premium 9 GmbH, the Wirtschaftsförderung Offenbach and the Amt für Kulturmanagement Offenbach. The patron is the Lord Mayor of the City of Offenbach, Dr. Felix Schwenke.
WALLSHOW
A production by DIAMANT Offenbach / Museum of Urban Culture in the future bicycle parking garage of the city of Offenbach Berliner Straße 43-47, Offenbach city centre
Press conference, Thursday 22.6., 11 a.m. on site, Berliner Straße 43-47 Opening, Friday 23.6., 19:00 Wallshow Talk 1 / Between Wall and White Cube, Saturday 24.6., 5 p.m. Robert Kaltenhäuser in conversation with artists of the exhibition Wallshow Talk 2 / Between Destruction and Aesthetics, Saturday 8.7., 5 p.m. Katia Herrmann and Robert Kaltenhäuser in conversation with artists of the exhibition Finissage, Saturday 22.7., 19:00
Opening hours Thu 17-21 / Fri 17-21 / Sat 16-21 / Sun 15-20
Curation Robert Kaltenhäuser, Heiner Blum, Jan Lotter
Production DIAMANT, Museum of Urban Culture
Patronage Dr.Felix Schwenke, Lord Mayor of the City of Offenbach
Supported by WasE Group of Companies Quarterback Premium 9 GmbH Business Development Offenbach Office for Cultural Management Offenbach
In cooperation with Public utility Offenbach HfG Offenbach Association for Experimental Space Concepts
https://www.hfg-offenbach.de/de/calendar/diamant-offenbach-museum-of-urban-culture#veranstaltung
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