ART CITIES:Berlin-Ingo Mittelstaedt
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Haus am Waldsee Ingo Mittelstaedt uses the artworks from the Peter Raue Collection as his raw material from which he selects, which he collages and which he relates to his own photographic works and found objects from his studio. Questions of authorship and ownership morph into a new network of references, images, objects and texts.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Haus am Waldsee Archive
Beginning with David Hockney’s series “The Blue Guitar” (1975), Ingo Mittelstaedt’s main concern is a total installation addressing the subject of seeing, collecting and recycling objects as well as ideas from a contemporary perspective. Like in the game, the messages in the exhibition “Chinese Whispers”, the messages are continuously passed on from one artist to another, from one generation to the next, reinterpreted in altered contexts and different media. In our interconnected world the frame of reference has expanded enormously, becoming instantaneous and highly complex at the same time. Mittelstaedt translates these digital patterns into an artistic practice of controlled coincidences. The result is a new way of seeing things and objects. The exhibition is neither only a tribute to the exceptional Collector Peter Raue, nor the result of a curatorial achievement on the part of the artist Ingo Mittelstaedt. Rather, the total installation constitutes an artwork. The artist bursts open the hierarchies of art history and subverts the rules of common exhibition practices. The exhibition shows eight identifiable images in space. Together, they consist of more than 100 artworks from the collection of Peter Raue, 40 photographic works by Ingo Mittelstaedt and found objects from the artist’s studio, who lives in Hamburg and Berlin. Many of the works incorporated into the discourse of this exhibition are by artists who have had exhibitions at Haus am Waldsee in the past: Cy Twombly (1963), Joseph Beuys (1967), Rainer Kriester (1972), Marcel Duchamps (1973), Marcel Broodthaers (1974), David Hockney (1975), Rebecca Horn (1975) and Gotthard Graubner (1987).
Info: Curators: Ingo Mittelstaedt and Katja Blomberg, Haus am Waldsee , Argentinische Allee 30, Berlin, Duration: 8/7-28/8/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 12:00-18:00, www.hausamwaldsee.de
