MARTIN KIPPENBERGER. THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART SYROS

MARTIN KIPPENBERGER

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART SYROS

Edited by Samuel Gross

Palazzo Sant’Elia – Palermo

16 June – 31 July 2018

Martin Kippenberger (1953 – 1997) was one of the most versatile and prolific post-war German artists. Exuberant and energetic, he has developed a very complex and multifaceted body of work including paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, books, drawings, multiples and large-scale installations. Throwing himself into different roles with a compulsive energy and an irreverent approach, Kippenberger has constantly reinvented his artistic journey, undermining the strict categorizations of authenticity and originality of art through appropriation, collaboration and delegation.

 The exhibition “Martin Kippenberger. The Museum of Modern Art Syros” will start from the last exhibition project curated by the artist at the MAMCO in Geneva in 1997 – the year of his premature death – and bearing in mind the experience gained in the 1990s at the “non-museum” of its foundation, the MOMAS in Greece. “If they don’t give me the possibility of a museum exhibition, I will establish my museum, very far away, on the periphery of the art world. I will invite my friends and colleagues and send invitation cards. These invitation cards will be the only concrete proof” declared the artist who, from the periphery of the international art system, in the dilapidated skeleton of a building located near the sea, founded his new museum, the MOMAS. As founder, curator and director of MOMAS, he prints and distributes invitations,

Kippenberger reflects on the difficult relationship between artist and museum institution, as well as problematizing the nature, role and function of the museum itself. By subverting the structure of the conventional museum and its compromises, the artist with MOMAS dictates his own conditions according to an unpredictable and versatile approach, configuring an alternative to the system of production and reception of art.

The exhibition aims to recreate the experiences of those years and shed light on one of the artist’s most ambitious works, giving the opportunity to access rarely exhibited works, photographs, documents, from the collections of the MAMCO museum in Geneva, from the Estate Martin Kippenberger, private collectors from Greece, and from the collections and archives of the artists on display.

The exhibition, hosted at Palazzo Sant’Elia in Palermo, is organized by the Swiss Institute on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of its foundation, in collaboration with the MAMCO of Geneva and the Martin Kippenberger Estate, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Curator Samuel Gross . The event is included in the official program of collateral events of the MANIFESTA 12 biennial and will be accompanied by a symposium, screenings and concerts open to the public on 6 – 7 – 8 July. In the spring of 2019 the exhibition will travel to the MAMCO in Geneva where it will be open from 30 May to 9 September