Der Traum der Bibliothek

The other universe – libraries and books exert a great fascination. They are spaces of collective memory and repositories of knowledge. In these places of contemplation and concentration, a look inside a book opens up new worlds. The exhibition „Der Traum der Bibliothek“ illuminates this fascination from the perspective of conceptual art. With objects, installations and films, the artists in the exhibition playfully address the collection, its forms of presentation and its criteria of order. Bookshelves and displays come into view just as much as the situation of reading. Since the early 1990s, for instance, books have been the exclusive material of Peter Wüthrich. High up beneath the ceiling they appear to rise like a flock of birds – fleeting thoughts, books (and book-friends) whose content we can only guess at. Like the many legendary pirate treasures, however, the books are out of reach, and this constantly triggers the desire to be able to read them. Shaken by invisible forces, turned upside down and finally hurled out of their small world – the bookshelf – into unknown space: such is the fate of the books in Julius Brauckmann’s video. With Saadane Afif we plunge into a world of buccaneers and corsairs; the literature is placed in wave-shaped shelves beneath dripped, dried, glittering paint, as though in a treasure chest just raised from the sea and covered with algae. Clegg & Guttmann may be regarded as the inventors of the public library – a principle that has spread like a grassroots revolution through cities and even into the countryside: books are placed in a public square, and whoever takes one from the shelf adds one of their own. The photograph on the right documents an action in the small town of Pritzwalk in Brandenburg. Local residents were asked to bring together their children’s books from GDR times. The result was a kind of cross-section through the childhoods of several generations. Reading the covers and spines calls up memories of a vanished world, which is why the project stirred up numerous emotional discussions.

Artists:
Saadane Afif, Jacques André, Margit Bauer, Achim Bitter, Julius Brauckmann, Clegg & Guttmann, Fernanda Fragateiro, Lutz Fritsch, Michael Glawogger, Rodney Graham, Thomas Hartmann, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Abigail Reynolds, Michel Sauer, Beatrix Schwehm, Mika Taanila, Erdem Taşdelen, Peter Wüthrich, Erwin Wurm

Exhibition:
Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, 31/3 – 1/9/2019