Verena Issel – Yellow Pages Installations and their individual components

by von Dziembowski, Bettina; Wagner, Marianne; Wurth, Laura Helena; Hänsel, Isa; Hug, Alfons; Wellmann, Marc; Breker, Frank; Gorges, Tanja; Oechsner, Annette; Sembil, Stefanie; Heitzer, Anja

• ISBN13: 9783969121887
• ISBN10: 3969121884
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2024-11-22
• Publisher: DCV

Summary

Verena Issel’s installations feel friendly and inviting, they are soft, round, colorful—we cannot but smile when we look at them. The sculptures and pictures she makes for them are replicas, sometimes laced with irony, of familiar objects from nature and culture—palm trees, ancient columns, and more—which she manufactures out of materials that surround us in everyday life and the domestic sphere such as an old bag, foamed plastic fragments, or a drainpipe. They are awkward giants, monochrome, simplified, two- and three-dimensional forms that wish us no ill. Taking a closer look, we realize that they embody what has been lost, that they are a plastic version of what we are destroying or have destroyed already: nature, obviously, but also ourselves and our cultural and social achievements. Their merriment and sympathy are tinged with melancholy, and the loss is doubly painful when we consider that the sculptures and graphic art are filled with no more than an imitation of life, and an exaggerated one. This catalogue presents a survey of Issel’s diverse and sprawling oeuvre. Expertly choreographed shots of the colorful works convey vivid impressions of her installations.

Author Biography

Bettina von Dziembowski is the director of Kunstverein & Stiftung Springhornhof in Neuenkirchen, sponsor of one of Europe's leading landscape art projects and initiator of the NEULAND Landscape Art Prize. Marianne Wagner is a curator for contemporary art and head of the Skulptur Projekte Archives at the LWL-Museum fü r Kunst und Kultur. Together with Kasper Kö nig and Britta Peters, she curated the Skulptur Projekte 2017. She has developed and realized exhibition projects at the Kunstmuseum Thun, the Aargauer Kunsthaus, and the Nidwaldner Museum and has taught at Universitä t Bern, Hochschule der Kü nste Bern, Kunstakademie Mü nster as well as at Goethe Institute. Laura Helena Wurth is an art critic and author. She studied cultural studies at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and Humboldt University in Berlin. She works as a freelance author for FAZ, NZZ, ZEIT and Deutschlandfunk Kultur, among others. From July 2023 she will be editor of the program Kompressor at Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Isa Hä nsel is the artistic Director of Kunstverein Jesteburg e.V. Alfons Hug is a German curator, art critic and exhibition organizer. As an exhibition organizer, he was the first non-Brazilian to curate the art biennials in Sã o Paulo in 2002 and 2004. In the 1990s, he was head of the visual arts department at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, curator of the Latin American pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia 2004 in 2011 and chief curator of the 1st to 3rd Bienal de Montevideo 2012 to 2016. In 2018, he is responsible for the Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre. Marc Wellmann is a German art historian and curator. After a period as a freelance curator, during which he conceived exhibitions for Galerie Max Lang in New York and for the branch of Galerie Volker Diehl in Moscow, among others, he became exhibition director of the Georg-Kolbe-Museum in 2008. Since April 2013, Wellmann has been Artistic Director at Haus am Lü tzowplatz, Berlin's oldest art association. Frank Breker is a freelance interior designer and interior decorator Tanja Gorges works as a cross-media correspondent for Bayerischer Rundfunk. Annette Oechsner has been showing younger contemporary art since founding her gallery in 2006. She is committed to classic gallery work and accompanies a core group of artists with whom she stimulates and highlights developments. Stefanie Sembil is a curator at the State Representation of Lower Saxony. She is responsible for the conception and realization of thematic annual programs for the state's representation in Berlin. In addition to her work as a curator, she is also the Equal Opportunities Officer for the Ministry in Hanover and the State Representation in Berlin. Anja Heitzer has been working in project management at the Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund since 2023. She was previously a curator for contemporary art at the Kunsthalle Mannheim.