Heimo Zobernig. Piet Mondrian / Demonstration Rooms. Céline Condorelli, Kapwani Kiwanga, Judy Radul

Based on three spatial designs created in Dresden in 1925/26, the Dresden State Art Collections will examine contemporary room and exhibition concepts, and develop perspectives for their practical application in the museum environment today. In a working and research process without any fixed expectations, participants will develop model projects based on their ideas for future presentations of the museum’s collections and architectural solutions for the Dresden Albertinum. The term “demonstration space”, coined by El Lissitzky, will serve as the historical reference point, especially with regard to the communicative tasks of today’s exhibition displays.

Heimo Zobernig. Piet Mondrian - A spatial appropriation

The Austrian artist Heimo Zobernig is an active participant in this field at the international level. His subtle and subversive spatial interventions and exhibition displays are venues of social exchange. He reflects on spatial experience and current patterns of perception, also with respect to the room concepts of the Bauhaus.

Since the mid-1980s Zobernig has created geometric abstractions similar to those by Piet Mondrian. For his latest project in the Lichthof of the Albertinum, he has developed a walk-through room installation which sculpturally recreates the design principles featured in three of Mondrian’s sketches from 1926. The installation is accompanied by a selection of his more recent paintings from a picture cycle he started in 2000. In these works, Zobernig uses materials such as acrylic paints and tape to examine the “grid” as a pioneering form of modernist expression.

Demonstration Rooms. Interventions by Céline Condorelli, Kapwani Kiwanga, Judy Radul

For this project, contemporary artists Céline Condorelli, Kapwani Kiwanga and Judy Radul have developed artistic interventions that reflect on the permanent collection at the Albertinum. In various rooms inside the museum, their site-specific works question our viewing habits and spatial perception. The interventions refer to ideas proposed by El Lissitzky whose “Room for Constructive Art” at the Dresden International Art Exhibition in 1926 offered alternative perspectives on art by means of unconventional spatial design. As this project demonstrates, Mondrian’s and Lissitzsky’s progressive ideas still hold the potential to stimulate new ways of thinking about design and spatial concepts.

Artistic director: Birgit Dalbajewa
Artists: Céline Condorelli (GB), Kapwani Kiwanga (CA), Judy Radul (CA), Heimo Zobernig (AT) and others