Exhibition "My Last Will"
The Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz presents My Last Will, a multimedia exhibition consisting of 32 contemporary positions. Invited by the Munich artist duo M+M, selected international artists and artist groups react to the question "What remains?"
The curator duo M+M has staged an impressive exhibition course in which a multitude of mostly newly created works can be experienced, including five expansive film and sound installations specially commissioned for the exhibition. The individual confrontation with their own legacy shows how multifaceted contemporary artists reflect on and critically question the meaning of their own work. They try to get to the core of what constitutes their artistic goal or even their personal interest. They sound out the presumed significance of their work for a future that they themselves will no longer experience and whose standards of value are still completely unknown to them.
Some artists radically confront their family environment, such as Erik van Lieshout in an argument with his father or the Italian artists' group MADBEDO in their filmic meditation on their mothers' skin. Others reflect on themselves and their work, like Keren Cytter in her cinematic essay with a male alter ego or Raphaela Vogel in her fetish-like poster archive made of animal skins. Tobias Zielony looks back on intense moments since his childhood in a picture essay. Portia Zvavahera sets a sign of collective cohesion in her painting Cosmic Prayers. Other positions develop unusual methods of preserving nature or of political engagement. PPKK (Schönfeld & Scoufaras) compose a song code that warns of contaminated repositories even in the future. Lara Almarcegui buys mining rights to stop companies from mining in untouched nature.
Some artists, on the other hand, focus their attention entirely on the here and now in accordance with their ideological tradition and thus fundamentally question the significance of a future legacy. These positions include the Buddhist-influenced Su-Mei Tse, Mire Lee or Su Hui-Yu, who developed a visually powerful film installation, but also the lustful anarchist Carlos Amorales. Finally, death itself, which is usually taboo, emerges as a theme in the exhibition, as in Santiago Sierra's Death Counter and Agniszka Polska's sad pictorial narrative.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the artist's book My Last Will is published by Franz und Walther König. All the texts, drawings, photographs and collages by the participating artists are collected here like an anthology. The accompanying programme includes guided tours, artist talks and workshops. The project is curated by the artist group M+M and is a cooperation between the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz and the Casino Luxembourg, Forum d'art contemporain.
