Welt in der Schwebe /
Up in the Air

While we have hitherto regarded air in everyday life as something self-evident, in political and social discourse it currently appears as an element that causes problems: in the coronavirus crisis we wear mouth-and-nose coverings in order to protect others from the air we breathe out, scientists are investigating what role aerosols play in the transmission of the Covid-19 virus, and climate activists are fighting for clean air in order to save the world while there is still time. Depicting air has been one of art’s challenges since the Renaissance at the latest. Air as a working material, by contrast, is a relatively recent phenomenon in art. Since the beginning of modernism, artists have striven for the artistic appropriation of the world as well as for its transgression and transformation. It therefore seems only logical that they turned to air not only as an idea but also as a material. Air is no longer merely depicted as wind, clouds, mist, steam, smoke or breath, but is deliberately employed as a medium. Since then air has appeared as a means of expression and a subject at once in the visual, applied and performing arts. The exhibition and the accompanying book focus on air as an artistic material and as a vehicle of forms and ideas in the visual arts. The works on show, just like the material they all have in common, are at times expansive, at times minimal or even invisible, solid as well as ephemeral, positioned indoors as well as out of doors. Art storms, exhales, wafts, blows, evaporates, breathes, murmurs and floats.

Artists:
Nina Canell, Charlotte Charbonnel, Judy Chicago, Christo und Jeanne-Claude, Andreas Gefeller, Stefani Glauber, Hans Hemmert, Edith Kollath, Lang/Baumann, Piero Manzoni, Lyoudmila Milanova und 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