12 Rooms

Live Art / Group Show

  • © Jörg Baumann
    (c) Jörg Baumann
  • © Jörg Baumann
    (c) Jörg Baumann
  • Santiago Sierra: Veterans of the wars of Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq facing the corner, 2011 / © Santiago Sierra, Manchester International Festival 2011, Foto: Alan Seabright
    Santiago Sierra: Veterans of the wars of Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq facing the corner, 2011
    (c) Santiago Sierra, Manchester International Festival 2011, Foto: Alan Seabright
  • Allora & Calzadilla: Revolving Door, 2011 / © Allora & Calzadilla, Manchester International Festival,2011, Foto: Howard Barlow
    Allora & Calzadilla: Revolving Door, 2011
    (c) Allora & Calzadilla, Manchester International Festival,2011, Foto: Howard Barlow

A thin girl wearing a T-shirt and sneakers speaks with a quiet voice. She introduces herself as a manga figure that has been transformed into a real human being. A man wearing camouflage pants turns his back on us. A young woman loses her footing, her gaze is empty and her right arm outstretched, as if she wasseeking hold.

The manga girl, the veteran, and the woman in free fall are all actors in an exhibition project in which the curators Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist invited international artists from all five continents to turn the museum space into a stage.

The results are physical structures and formations that not merely rely on a final, fixed shape, but take form before the eyes of the spectators and in their imagination. Artists including Marina Abramovi, Roman Ondák, Santiago Sierra, or Tino Sehgal have succeeded in creating highly varied presentations of shame, modesty, alienation, and beauty that could not be more diverse.

The parcour of the exhibition allows for very direct, intense encounters that theaters usually not facilitate due to the distance separating the spectators from the stage. A fleeting gaze, a brief conversation, a surprising gesture, a strange observation: each of the twelve rooms touches the spectator in a particular way. They are left to decide whether they should remain, move on, or return to see what has changed.

Live art is an immaterial art that relies on limited means: space, voice, movement. In a time in which the concept of the work has lost its aura, the interest in historical and contemporary performances has grown significantly. Many artists have experimented with new forms of live acts as mirrors of social phenomena. In subtle ways they set social relations in motion: art and the market, space and time, man and woman, spirit and material. Their minimalistic works are universally understandable, and in their directness run contrary to digital society. At the same time, they find congenial forms of expression for our permanently temporary, fluid forms of existence in the twenty first century. The Museum Folkwang is a Ruhrtriennale partner for the first time and will be hosting several events in 2012 - 2014 .

Hans Ulrich Obrist is one of the most productive exhibition makers in the world of contemporary art. He has been co-director of London's Serpentine Gallery since 2006.

Klaus Biesenbach founded Kunst-Werke (KW) Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin in 1991 at the young age of 24. Since January 2010 he has been director at P.S.1., MoMA's center for contemporary art.

 

To book tickets for the exhibition, contact our visitor's office:
Telephone: +49 201 / 88 45 444
Email:

Program, Education and Outreach, Museum Folkwang - www.museum-folkwang.de


Marina Abramović, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, John Baldessari, Simon Fujiwara, Damien Hirst, Joan Jonas, Xavier Le Roy, Laura Lima, Roman Ondák, Lucy Raven, Tino Sehgal, Santiago Sierra, Xu Zhen
Curators —
Klaus Biesenbach, Hans Ulrich Obrist
Performers from the Ruhrtriennale and Manchester International Festival —

Shows

Location
Premiere
— 17. August 2012
Further dates
— 18. 19. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. August
German premiere
The 12 Rooms-ticket includes free admission to the videoinstallation Current by Michal Rovner at Mischanlage, Kokerei Zollverein Essen
Tickets
— 8 €
Reduced prices start at 5,00 €
August
  • Fri17Aug
    12.00 - 22.00
    12 Rooms on 17. August 2012 at 12.00 PM
  • Sat18Aug
    10.00 - 18.00
    12 Rooms on 18. August 2012 at 10.00 AM
  • Sun19Aug
    10.00 - 18.00
    12 Rooms on 19. August 2012 at 10.00 AM
  • Tue21Aug
    10.00 - 18.00
    12 Rooms on 21. August 2012 at 10.00 AM
  • Wed22Aug
    10.00 - 18.00
    12 Rooms on 22. August 2012 at 10.00 AM
  • Thu23Aug
    10.00 - 18.00
    12 Rooms on 23. August 2012 at 10.00 AM
  • Fri24Aug
    11.00 - 22.00
    12 Rooms on 24. August 2012 at 10.00 AM
  • Sat25Aug
    10.00 - 18.00
    12 Rooms on 25. August 2012 at 10.00 AM
  • Sun26Aug
    10.00 - 18.00
    12 Rooms on 26. August 2012 at 10.00 AM

Recommendations

Klaus Biesenbach, Hans Ulrich Obrist / Artists taking part in the group show 12 Rooms
17. August 2012
Museum Folkwang, Essen
A coproduction of Ruhrtriennale with Manchester International Festival (GB), Manchester Art Gallery (GB), presented in cooperation with the Folkwang Museum Essen. Funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes.