Major exhibition to celebrate influential German artist
Published On Mon 6 Oct 2014 by Grant Hill
The first major UK exhibition of work by the late German conceptual artist Anna Oppermann will take place at Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) later this month.
‘Anna Oppermann: Cotoneaster horizontalis’ will see the artist’s celebrated 1982 ensemble Cotoneaster horizontalis (Anticommunication Design) exhibited at Cooper Gallery along with drawings, prints, collages, documentary films and archival material. The exhibition opens with a Preview Evening on Thursday, 16th October and runs until 13th December.
Composed of hundreds and often thousands of drawings, paintings, photographs, texts, slogans and objects, Oppermann’s distinctive art works lay bare the process of perception, awareness and the very practice of thinking itself.
Oppermann used the word ‘ensemble’ to describe her expansive work and their method of construction. During her career, she created over 70 of these ensembles, generating a body of highly influential works that are still capable of interrogating and subverting the boundaries and practice of contemporary art and critiquing the ideological construction of the personal in society.
Cooper Gallery Curator Sophia Hao said, “The exhibition is conceived from two key moments; a period when Oppermann started exploring her notion of ‘ensemble’ shortly after she graduated from art school and later when she was established as a tutor at the University of Wuppertal and facing the conservative practices of academia.
“Revisiting Oppermann’s practice now is of significant importance; not only because her work interrogated and subverted the boundaries in contemporary art through her ‘ensembles’, but also because what she addressed consistently in her unique art works; the commercialisation of art, sexuality, the role of the artist and her position as a woman in society, continue to be of critical relevance today.
“By drawing out the interrelation of the personal and the political in the development of Oppermann’s practice, this curatorial approach provides a context in which to situate a body of archival material that foreground the social and biographical factors informing her works.”
Oppermann received international recognition for her ensembles, which were presented in major solo exhibitions and biennials. Since her death in 1993, her work has been realised in major solo presentations around the world.
‘Anna Oppermann: Cotoneaster horizontalis’ will be the first major solo exhibition of Oppermann’s work in the UK and will form the largest presentation of her work in the country since her work was featured at the Serpentine Gallery in 1981.
A forum entitled ‘The Process of Content: on the temporality in Conceptual Art’ is also planned to take place as part of the exhibition on 22nd November. This will bring together UK and German philosophers, writers and curators to examine the history, politics and wider social reverberations around conceptual art. Confirmed UK speakers include the esteemed curators and critics Guy Brett and Lynda Morris and Head of Sculpture Studies at Henry Moore Institute Lisa Le Feuvre.
Further information is available at http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/exhibitions/exhibitions/anna-oppermann/ or by emailing exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk.
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