The Brancusi Effect

The Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957) is numbered among the 20th century’s most influential artists. With his considerations of the way that pedestal and presented work relate to each other he launched a reorientation of the relationship between object, viewer and space. This had a decisive influence on minimal art and the aesthetic of the installation as a whole. Moreover, with its modular structure and adaptability to different presentation contexts, Brancusi’s work is seen as the point where the autonomy of the artwork began to be reduced in favour of a reflection on its historical and institutional positioning.

The exhibition The Brancusi Effect takes this potential into account as well as the strongly documentary aspect implicit in Brancusi’s artistic approach, which was expressed in countless photographic images of installations taken in his studio. The exhibition presents original photographic material together with selected positions of contemporary art that reference Brancusi, and so creates an imposing spatial installation comprising various sculptures that reflect the recent currency of the sculptural within contemporary art.
Artists
Saâdane Afif, Wilfrid Almendra, Nina Beier, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Constantin Brancusi, André Cadere, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Alessio delli Castelli, Thea Djordjadze, Paulien Föllings, Isa Genzken, Konstantin Grcic, Jürgen Mayer H., Sofia Hultén, Haraldur Jónsson, An Te Liu, Josephine Meckseper, Ute Müller, Anca Munteanu Rimnic, Shahryar Nashat, Olaf Nicolai, Odilon Pain, Luiz Roque, Rudi Stanzel
Curators
Vanessa Joan Müller, Nicolaus Schafhausen