Exhi­bi­tion at the Kun­sthalle Tübin­gen

The exhi­bi­tion Bewohnte Mythen / Inhab­it­ed Myths in der Kun­sthalle Tübin­gen is con­tex­tu­al­is­ing Joseph Beuys’ oeu­vre by means of more than 100 works from the peri­od of their gen­e­sis – post-war art with its recep­tiv­i­ty for myths. In addi­tion to draw­ings, sculp­tures and videos by the artist, there­fore, the exhi­bi­tion also includes works by Willi Baumeis­ter, Her­mann Nitsch, Richard Oelze, Meret Oppen­heim and Fritz Win­ter. Fur­ther­more, a chrono­log­i­cal path around the exhi­bi­tion will illus­trate how pre-mod­ern tra­di­tions are inter­wo­ven like a red thread through­out Beuys’ exten­sive oeu­vre – from his ear­ly work to his late actions and polit­i­cal per­for­mances. Start­ing with draw­ings deal­ing with motifs from folk belief, via the art of heal­ing and up to the 1960s dur­ing which – in the con­text of the Fluxus and Hap­pen­ing move­ment – he used rites as mag­ic catal­y­sers in his actions so as to address his audience’s sens­es and pro­voke their uncon­scious. From the view­point of sym­bol the­o­ry and cul­tur­al sci­ence, this exhi­bi­tion, con­ceived and curat­ed by Nicole Fritz, will facil­i­tate access to an under­stand­ing of Beuys’ indi­vid­ual artis­tic idiom and his so artis­ti­cal­ly artic­u­lat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of the world.

The Bewohnte Mythen exhi­bi­tion along with the frame­work pro­gramme also take into account the lat­est research find­ings from the Muse­um Schloss Moy­land on the theme of Beuys and Nation­al Social­ism, as well are cur­rent per­cep­tions of Beuys’s oeu­vre from a fem­i­nist and a human-ani­mal stud­ies view­point