Jadé Fadojutimi / Charline von Heyl / Albert Oehlen

On the 30th anniversary of its presence along the Museum Mile, the Kunstmuseum Bonn is offering a comprehensive view of its collection of contemporary art, which is being freshly presented from new perspectives in twenty rooms. Even if the presentation shows the Kunstmuseum to be a special site for painting, fundamental roles in the argumentation are nonetheless played by installation, film and photography. The exhibition includes works that are important for the profile of the collection along with new acquisitions, gifts and loans from private collections. It combines monographic and thematic groups of works from Sigmar Polke to Monika Baer, from Tamara Grcic, Shannon Bool and Norbert Schwontkowski all the way to John Bock. A complex pathway arises for encountering the works: Outside and inside spaces can be walked into, are measured cartographically, are opened into uncertain interiors; the body is declared to be a battle zone; faces transform themselves into masks, the self plays various roles. Painting reveals itself to be tangled texture and smooth surface, orderly and disorderly overlapping, an alchemical mixture of exoticism and popular culture. Materials engage in extended discussions, photographic series gather the world into flexible repositories, painting and photography investigate the simultaneity of the clear and the unclear. A room for children with works by Patricia Thoma issues an invitation to transform papers. The museum becomes a “space for imaginative actions” (Albert Oehlen).