EXHIBITION PROGRAMME 2015 THE HIGHLIGHTS Isa Genzken: New Works 14 March 31 May 2015 Isa Genzken (b. 1948) is one of the most influential women artists of the present. In the spring of 2015, her most recent workgroup will be on view for the first time in Germany at the branch of the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst. Since the 1970s the sculptor Genzken has developed an artistic stance that, though making reference to Pop Art and Minimalism, has nonetheless brought forth a thoroughly idiosyncratic and unique visual language. Since early 2000, Genzken has been working increasingly with consumerist objects, combining them with industrial materials as well as photographs and fragments of images from the popular media. She treats these individual elements as set-piece components of our contemporary world, which she brings together to create abstract and surreally narrative constellations. Titled Isa Genzken: New Works, the exhibition will feature some twenty sculptures of individual figures and figural groups representing artistically alienated self-portraits of the artist. The actors, as Genzken styles them, wear items from her own personal wardrobe edged with decorative materials and supplemented with articles of protective clothing. The figures are moreover camouflaged with reflective sheets of synthetic material or rendered silent with multicoloured adhesive tape. Genzken designed the German Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale in Venice in 2007 and in 2013 received recognition for her life s work with a comprehensive retrospective at the MoMA Museum of Modern Art in New York. Conceived in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition is being co-produced with the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg. Press conference: Thursday, 12 March 2015, 11 am Opening: Friday, 13 March 2015, 8 pm
RAY Photography Projects: Imagine Reality In 2015, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst will once again serve as a key partner to the RAY Photography Projects Frankfurt/RheinMain. Following the successful first edition of the international photography triennial in 2012, RAY 2015 will once again present outstanding international approaches to contemporary photography, thus bringing together the special qualities of the collections and institutions represented in Frankfurt and the region in a unique cooperative endeavour. The MMK will present the main exhibition, IMAGINE REALITY, in collaboration with the Museum Angewandte Kunst and the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt. The photographic approaches featured in this show will focus above all on the boundaries between documentary, photojournalistic, applied and artistic photography. The will present exclusive new productions commissioned by RAY 2015 as well as artistic works addressing subjective and staged realities. RAY 2015 will show how photography not only reproduces our reality, but also itself creates new realities. RAY 2015 is an initiative of the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain and a cooperative undertaking of the Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie, Sammlung Deutsche Bank, DZ BANK Kunstsammlung, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Marta Hoepffner- Gesellschaft für Fotografie e.v. / Stadtmuseum Hofheim, Museum Angewandte Kunst, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Museum Wiesbaden, NKV Nassauischer Kunstverein and Stiftung Opelvillen Rüsselsheim. Press conference: Thursday, 18 June 2015, 11 am Opening: Friday, 19 June 2015, 7 pmmk 2 Kostas Murkudis 17 July 2015 14 February 2016 In 2015 the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main will stage the first comprehensive museum exhibition of the work of Kostas Murkudis, one of the most well-known fashion designers in the world today. With this exhibition project, the MMK is continuing and broadening its programmatic focus on the borderlands between the visual arts and fashion. The exhibition architecture and displays will be designed by the German artist Carsten Nicolai. In 2013, Kostas Murkudis donated large parts of his archive as well as original designs and prototypes to three international museum collections: the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, the Palais Galliera Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris, and the Kyoto Costume Institute, Japan. His gift to the MMK marks the point of departure for the extensive show at the MMK 2. Artistic outlooks and ways of working have had a decisive influence on Murkudis s work. This circumstance is manifest particularly in his sculptural approach, his investigation of threedimensional materials, his creative praxis, but also in the presentation of his designs in a manner
distinctly different from the ordinary fashion show. By addressing social, sculptural and participatory issues, he changes our conceptions and perceptions of the medium of fashion. Comprehensive research and perceivable architectural influences are further aspects that permeate his oeuvre. The exhibition will showcase Murkudis s work in selected collections, workgroups and prototypes. With the aid of additional material, it will also take a more in-depth look at several aspects of his œuvre, allowing visitors literally to experience it within the framework of various presentation forms. For the exhibition at the MMK, Kostas Murkudis will also examine the relationships between his designs and prominent works from the museum s holdings, thus curating a presentation of the collection. The latter will encompass concepts and display forms, performance, the ready-made, material aesthetics and many other phenomena and approaches with which artists have concerned themselves since the 1960s. Artistic oeuvres in which textiles play an important role will moreover enter into dialogue with Murkudis s collections and individual pieces. Sponsored by: MMK Stiftung, German Federal Cultural Foundation, Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband (DSGV) Press conference: 16 July 2015, 11 am Opening: 16 July 2015, 8 pm William Forsythe 17 October 2015 10 January 2016 In the autumn, the internationally celebrated choreographer and dancer William Forsythe will present a selection of his performative objects, video installations, dance performances and interactive environments at the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst. During the years of his service as ballet director of Ballett Frankfurt (1984 2004), Forsythe established himself as one of the most prominent choreographers of our time. At the he will show artworks produced concurrently with his dance performances for Ballett Frankfurt and The Forsythe Company (founded in 2005). Usually minimalistic in form, William Forsythe s room installations place the human being in the limelight. His works will moreover enter into direct exchange with the museum architecture and the masterpieces of the MMK Collection. Press conference: Thursday, 15 October 2015, 11 am Opening: Friday, 16 October 2015, 8 pm
FURTHER EXHIBITION PROJECTS AT THE Gerald Domenig: Exhibition Preparations 21 February 31 May 2015 The artist Gerald Domenig (b. 1953), a resident of Frankfurt, has been amassing his extensive archive of drawings and photographs since the 1970s. The exhibition at the will present a selection of more than one hundred photos and two hundred drawings from his œuvre, which is distinguished by thematic openness on the one hand and formal rigour on the other. Throughout the exhibition, Domenig will revise the arrangement of the drawings again and again. Visitors will thus have the opportunity to follow the show s constant transformation, which will lend it the character of a show in preparation. Press conference: Thursday, 19 February 2015, 11 am Opening: Friday, 20 February 2015, 7 pm John Skoog: Slow Return 28 March 31 May 2015 The Baloise Group has been awarding its art prize to young artists every year since 1999. The group moreover purchases workgroups by the prize recipients and gives these artworks to two major European museums. The 16th Baloise Art Prize went to John Skoog (b. 1985). Skoog s Reduit (Redoubt) of 2014 will enter the collection of the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst. The film will be on view at the in a new installation, and accompanied by other works. Reduit (Redoubt) revolves (in the truest sense of the word) around a relic of the Cold War era in Sweden. The film s main protagonist is a bunker built by a private individual near a small town in Sweden to protect the population. Skoog enhances the filmic material with a collage of voices recalling the collective memories of the neighbours. Sponsored by: Baloise Group Opening: Friday, 27 March 2015, 7 pm
FURTHER EXHIBITION PROJECTS AT THE Hassan Khan: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said 30 January 12 April 2015 Hassan Khan (b. 1975) is an artist, musician and writer living and working in Cairo, Egypt. Before regularly exhibiting his work in art spaces, he was involved in a self-organized, underground art and music scene that was highly innovative, yet rarely public. Khan is considered a pioneering influence internationally, particularly in the fields of experimental music and video. Within the framework of the Frankfurter Positionen Festival für neue Werke, Khan is developing several new productions for the branch of the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst which he is combining with already existing works. In the manner typical of his artistic practice, he will challenge cultural artefacts such as clothing, music or poetry with the aid of a richly faceted layering of video, sculpture, text and sound, and explore the continuous shift between the personal and the formal. The presentation at the will be the artist s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. Sponsored by: BHF Bank Stiftung Opening: Thursday, 29 January, 7 pm Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2015 During the RAY 2015 photography triennial, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst will present the four finalists of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2015 at the : Nikolai Bakharev, Zanele Muholi, Viviane Sassen and a cooperative project by the artists Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse. The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize is an annual award established in 1997 by The Photographers' Gallery in London and presented in collaboration with the Deutsche Börse Group
every year since 2005. Every year, a living photo artist who has made a significant contribution to photography the previous year in Europe in the form of an exhibition or publication receives the purse of 30,000. The award is considered one of the most prestigious art prizes worldwide. The announcement of the winner will take place on 28 May 2015 within the framework of an award ceremony at the Photographers Gallery. Opening: Friday, 19 June 2015, 5:30 pm Graduates of the Städelschule 2015 19 October 15 November 2015 Jürgen Ponto-Stiftung Grant Recipients 12 December 2015 14 February 2016 THE EXHIBITIONS: AN OVERVIEW Hassan Khan: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said 30 January 12 April 2015 Gerald Domenig: Exhibition Preparations 21 February 31 May 2015 Isa Genzken: New Works 14 March 31 May 2015 John Skoog: Slow Return 28 March 31 May 2015 RAY Photography Projects: Imagine Reality
Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2015 MMK 2 Kostas Murkudis 17 July 2015 14 February 2016 William Forsythe 17 October 2015 10 January 2016 Graduates of the Städelschule 2015 19 October 15 November 2015 Jürgen Ponto-Stiftung Grant Recipients 12 December 2015 14 February 2016 Press photos: Press photos are available for downloading on our Internet site at www.mmkfrankfurt.de/de/presse/pressedownload/ Press department: Christina Henneke Telephone +49 69 21237761 Daniela Denninger Telephone +49 69 21235844 Julia Haecker Telephone +49 69 21240571 Fax +49 69 21237882 presse.mmk@stadt-frankfurt.de