Welt in der Schwebe / Up in the Air

When air takes shape

While we used to take air for granted in everyday life, it currently appears as a problem-causing element in political and social discourse: during the coronavirus crisis, we are wearing face masks to protect others from the air we breathe, scientists are investigating the role aerosols play in the transmission of the Covid-19 virus and climate activists are fighting for clean air to save the world. The depiction of air has been an artistic challenge since the Renaissance at the latest. Air as a material, on the other hand, is a relatively recent phenomenon in art. Since modernism, artists have been striving for the artistic appropriation of the world as well as its dissolution of boundaries and transformation. It therefore seems only logical that they have turned to air not only as an idea, but also as a material. Air is no longer only depicted as wind, clouds, mist, vapour, smoke or breath, but is consciously used as a medium. Since then, air has appeared as both a means of expression and a theme in the visual, applied and performing arts. The exhibition and the accompanying book focus on air as an artistic material and as a carrier of forms and ideas in the visual arts. The exhibited works, just like the material they all share, are sometimes expansive, sometimes minimal or even invisible, solid and ephemeral, positioned indoors and outdoors. The art storms, breathes, blows, puffs, evaporates, breathes, whispers and floats.

Artists:inside:
Nina Canell, Charlotte Charbonnel, Judy Chicago, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Andreas Gefeller, Stefani Glauber, Hans Hemmert, Edith Kollath, Lang/Baumann, Piero Manzoni, Lyoudmila Milanova and Steffi Lindner, Yoko Ono, Otto Piene, Michael Pinsky, _____________, Arcangelo Sassolino, Rikuo Ueda, Ulay/Marina Abramović, Timm Ulrichs, Andy Warhol, Martin Werthmann

Exhibition:
Kunstmuseum Bonn, 24/2 - 19/6/2022