Essential Reduction
14 November 2020 - 30 January 2021
Felix Becker
Monika Brandmeier
Katrin Bremermann
Artjom Chepovetskyy
Goekhan Erdogan
Irene Grau
Oliver Gröne
Mathias Kessler
Rafael Rangel
Regine Schumann
India-Serena
Minh Dung Vu
Herbert Warmuth
Winter / Hoerbelt
Whether wanted or not, we find ourselves in a time in which reduction plays a central role. But reduction does not only mean renunciation; rather, it has its own poetry. This realization has preoccupied artists since the beginning of the 20th century and has led them to concentrate on essential questions in their artistic approaches. Modern and contemporary art, for example, is made up of various art movements, with the concept of reduction at their core.
In their works, the artists in the exhibition “Essential Reduction” also deal with the astonishingly broad spectrum of this concept, which leads from the reduction of the vocabulary of color and form to a social concept. Today, reduction is usually associated with the concept of minimalism. However, the practice of the artists represented in this exhibition is to be understood in the context of a post-minimalist discourse. “Essential Reduction” combines works that propose reduced aesthetic approaches, but go beyond the literal readability of minimalism and not only allow levels of association again, but actually demand them. Some of the artists also raise exciting questions about the limits of art.
