Video games of No Video games, Directions for Strolling in Excessive Spirits

Koelnischer Kunstverein, Cologne

13 November 2022 – 5 March 2023

Video games of No Video games – Directions for Strolling in Excessive Spirits presents 11 artists, whose work till lately was labeled as ‘Outsider Artwork’. This now outdated class – often known as ‘Artwork Brut’, describes the artwork of psychiatric sufferers, prisoners or self-taught artists, who create work outdoors standard buildings of artwork coaching and artwork manufacturing.

The exhibition critically challenges these standard markers of exclusion. The curators of this lengthy overdue exhibition – Nikola Dietrich, Director of Kunstverein, and ex-gallerist Susanne Zander intention to make seen how the introduced artists intentionally work with their dependencies and struggles brought on by discrimination and disenfranchisement.

The title of the exhibition is impressed by a portray by Dietrich Orth (1956 – 1018) which is on show within the entrance space of the Kunstverein. Orth, who drew quick texts resembling ‘Video games of No Video games – Directions for Strolling in Excessive Spirits‘ instantly onto the canvas, was admitted to hospitals quite a few instances, resulting from a recurring psychosis, and located his distinct visible language by way of artwork remedy.

Albert Leo Peil’s (1946 – 2019) filigree geometric drawings reveal male protagonists rising from futuristic, Arcadian landscapes. The figures are sometimes depicted in beautiful, multi-piece robes with excessive collars, radiating a spiritual environment.

Klaus Beyer (b. 1952) is usually recognized for his uncommon performances of Beatles songs which he deconstructs and covers together with his personal voice in German.

Lee Godie (1908-1994) who intentionally selected to reside on the streets of Chicago, used discovered materials because the supply of her pictures and work. She additionally took quite a few self-portraits in a photograph sales space within the Seventies which she overpainted with felt pen, pencil and watercolour, constantly reinvented herself with totally different costumes and make-up.

By forsaking social conventions and dominant traditions, in addition to undermining social or gender performances, the artists within the exhibition have regularly been met with a lack of information. This was actually the case for Helga Sophia Goetze (1922 – 2008) who broke away from a standard lady’s lifestyle within the Seventies to advocate totally free love, intercourse, and feminine pleasure nearly each day in entrance of the Memorial Church in Berlin. Radical roleplays have been carried out by Manuela Margarethe Hahn (1956-1996), who renamed herself Rabe Perplexum. In each her works and in life she adopted a raven persona. By means of her performances, actions and work that have been impressed by the Punk motion she already questioned fastened gender identities within the Nineteen Eighties.

Adelhyd von Bender (born as Harald Friedrich Bender, 1950 – 2014)) was expelled from the College of the Arts in Berlin in 1975. Difficult a deputyship in court docket for a few years, he used the photocopied letters from the German authorities as background for his drawings that break the world into mathematical formulation, creating a brand new world order intertwined with biographical particulars in associative chains.

Margarethe Held (1894 – 1981) produced tons of of portraits of imaginary prehistoric creatures in pencil and colored pencil and documented her visions in her guide ‘Uncontrollable Universe’ in 1977. Additionally August Walla (1936 – 2001) created his personal universe inhabited by ghosts, devils. gods and invented symbols while the Australian Youtube artist Wendy Vainity continues to make selfmade surreal and disturbing 3D animation which have repeatedly been blocked by the YouTube suppliers.

On the again wall of the exhibition house self-taught Afro-American artist William Scott’s (b. 1964) work render San Francisco as an imagined and fantastical utopian house, free from racism and marginalisation, that includes vibrant portraits of African-American celebrities and group members from his church.

The participation of Venture Artwork Works (an artist-led organisation in Hastings that collaborates with individuals who have complicated help wants) on the landmark exhibition Documenta 15 in Kassel final 12 months, reveals that standard classes resembling ‘Outsider Artwork’ or ‘Artwork Brut’ and the give attention to the artists ‘Outsiderness’ are actually thought of out of date. At the moment they have to be critically challenged.

Video games of No Video games – Directions for Strolling in Excessive Spirits doesn’t place the exhibited artists and their inventive practices within the margins of society, as an alternative it highlights how every artist intentionally labored or works with their dependencies and struggles. For me the exhibition offers highly effective and considerate insights into the difficulties and institutional inclusions the invited artists have been or are nonetheless dealing with right this moment as inventive practitioners however most significantly all of them provide solutions for a greater and fairer manner of treating each other.

Christine Takengny
Senior Curator

Hahnenstrasse 6, 50667 Cologne
Opening Instances: Tuesday to Sunday 11am – 6pm
Exhibition open till 5 March 2023