Made in Germany until 26.08 Kunstverein Hannover

From 25th May to 26th August 2007, the kestnergesellschaft, the Kunstverein Hannover, and the Sprengel Museum Hannover, will be presenting current positions in contemporary art from Germany in a major review exhibition. It focuses on the younger generation of artists of German and foreign origin who live and work chiefly in Germany. The selection of 52 artistic items for the exhibition makes no claim to completeness, preferring a paradigmatic provisional assessment. It is the outcome of nationwide selection process involving numerous visits to studios, intensive exchanges with artists and construction discussions on standpoints and works. The exhibition proclaims no national identity or the existence of genuinely “German art.” It attempts rather to demonstrate existing exchange processes at the economic, aesthetic, institutional, and intellectual levels, and shows the international dimension of the national. In a wide variety of ways, the participating artists succeed in expanding and modifying classical media. Their own aesthetic language combines different sources, images and information. They effortlessly mix present-day elements with well-known images from contemporary history long since entrenched in collective memory. And they draw on the rich fund of art history: modern art, the concept art of the 1960s and 1970s, minimal art, and currents of the 1980s. The artists submit the modern age to critical reflection, interrogating the relationship between private and public space, examining role patterns and their attribution, and are always on the lookout for a good story. Presentation has been distributed among the individual institutions in accordance with various criteria. The diversity of artistic media was to be demonstrated in all three institutions. Each “sub-exhibition” is also intended to be self-sufficient, with its own curatorial dramaturgy and both substantive and formal confrontations providing room for comparison and mutual reference. To attain the objectives of the exhibition, three key Hanoverian institutions in the field of contemporary and modern art, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the kestnergesellschaft, and Kunstverein Hannover, have joined forces for the first time. Close cooperation on all aspects of planning and staging also underlines the openness and substantive breadth of the project.