JOSEPH BEUYS: MAKE THE SECRETS PRODUCTIVE OPENS NEXT WEEK AT PACEWILDENSTEIN, 25 TH STREET MARCH 5 APRIL 10, 2010

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1 PW PRESS RELEASE F O R I M M E D I A T E R E L E A S E Contact: Jennifer Benz Joy or Lauren Staub jjoy@pacewildenstein.com lstaub@pacewildenstein.com JOSEPH BEUYS: MAKE THE SECRETS PRODUCTIVE OPENS NEXT WEEK AT PACEWILDENSTEIN, 25 TH STREET MARCH 5 APRIL 10, 2010 Every man is an artist. Make the secrets productive. Joseph Beuys NEW YORK, February 26, 2010 On Friday, March 5, 2010, PaceWildenstein, in collaboration with the artist s estate, will present Joseph Beuys: Make the Secrets Productive, an exhibition of twelve rare sculptures by the seminal twentieth-century artist, dating from the 1950s through the end of his career. Over 90 black and white photographs taken by Ute Klophaus, documenting eleven of the artist s Aktion works, will be shown alongside four of these iconic happenings on film. The installation will also feature a separate screening room showcasing rare footage and interviews with Beuys. Such an in-depth presentation of Beuys sculpture and objects combined with the actions has not been organized by a New York gallery in several decades. Joseph Beuys: Make the Secrets Productive will remain on view at PaceWildenstein s 534 West 25 th Street gallery through April 10, A catalogue with essays by Heiner Bastian, Prof. Dr. Joachim Pissarro, Bershad Professor of Art History and Director of the Hunter College Galleries, and Prof. Dr. Eugen Blume, head of the Hamburg Bahnhof, Museum for Contemporary Art, Berlin, will accompany the exhibition. Upon entering the main gallery, viewers encounter the unique work Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler (Make the Secrets Productive), a 1977 text-based sculpture painted on wood paneling with Braunkreuz, an earthy-looking substance Beuys created by combining household paint and hare s blood. This important work of art indoctrinates each visitor with the Beuysian ideology that every man is an artist and its message is the anchor

2 for the larger exhibition, which features a number of unique sculptures that have never before been presented in the United States. Three of the sculptures Feldbett (1982), OFEN ( ), and Tisch mit Aggregat ( ) were first installed in the group exhibition Zeitgeist at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, where Beuys recreated his Werkstatt (or workshop). The original model of Tisch mit Aggregat is part of the Tate s collection, London, and one of the four casts is held by the Sammlung des Deutschen Bundestags. The earliest sculpture in the show, Tisch 2 Pole, dates from Exhibited next to some of the later bronze and felt sculptures, this work depicts Beuys sensitivity to different materials. Doppelaggregat, another key work, was created in an edition of three, with casts two and three belonging to the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, as part of the Beuys Block, and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Joseph Beuys viewed the art of creation as a vehicle for social evolution. His visual vocabulary consisted of mundane and edible materials (felt, fat, honey, beeswax, chocolate), found objects (rubber stamps, glass jars, soda bottles), and elements (copper, iron, bronze, wood) that through repeated use attained symbolic, therapeutic, and spiritual associations for both the artist and his audience. The artist s initial encounter with performance art came in 1962, when he was introduced to the Fluxus movement spearheaded by a group of international artists testing the boundaries of conventional art practices. From his first performance in 1963 to the year he died, in 1986, Beuys conceived of and staged 70 happenings, or as he preferred to call them Aktionen. Through performance art, Beuys sought to enlighten and transform his audience; he often embraced the role of a shaman whose ritualized actions promoted self-healing and social transformation. Beuys allowed a select group to document these actions to be preserved in black and white photographs, and he recognized Ute Klophaus work to be valid documentation of his performances. Selected from an archive of approximately 1,750 photographs, PaceWildenstein is presenting for the first time a historical grouping of Klophaus black and white photographs taken over a three-year period, from 1965 to 1968, of eleven early performances. Four of Beuys performances: Und in uns unter uns landunter (1965), Eurasienstab (1967), Filz-TV (1968), and I Like America and America Likes Me (1976), which was conceived for and performed in New York City more than thirty years ago, will be screened on nearby video monitors to accompany the photographs. In his essay, Joseph Beuys and Photography, Prof. Dr. Eugen Blume examines the role of traditional photography in the creation of Beuys oeuvre. He writes, Black-and-white is one of the most fundamental and significant

3 aesthetic choices within the photographic work on Joseph Beuys. [It] had a strong sculptural power for [him]. Of Klophaus contribution, he acknowledges, the photographs make clear the epiphanic quality of the work of Joseph Beuys. It is integral to [his] entire work concept that even the documentation of work itself thus assumes the character of artwork... The intuitively grasped, congenial intimacy of her photographs led to a symbiosis of two artists that is unique in art history. As a compliment to the works on view in the main galleries, a screening room and library has been erected in the gallery s back viewing rooms. An interview on Beuys by Carolyn Tisdall entitled Arena and Everybody is an Artist by Werner Krüger are among the available footage, as is the lecture Public Dialogue at the New School for Social Research (1974). Joseph Beuys sculptor, teacher, performance artist, political activist is revered as one of contemporary art s most enigmatic post-war figures, with comparisons often being made to Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. However, unlike Duchamp, who Beuys criticized for his silence towards theory, and Warhol, who believed as Beuys did in the democratization of the art world but approached this radical concept from the perspective of fleeting fame, Beuys gave voice to the claim that every man is an artist now and forever. Each individual, he said, possessed the ability to tap into their unconscious mind, into their deepest secrets, to produce powerful works of art. This philosophy was fundamental to Beuys practice, as a teacher and as an artist. And it was precisely this outlook that aligned him within the theoretical framework of the German Romantics. Prof. Dr. Joachim Pissarro writes in his catalogue essay, Joseph Beuys: Between One and All, One of the most striking conceptual inventions of the Romantic era was to establish an analogy between the process of making a work of art and the organic growth observable in nature. The Beuysian system very much reflects this belief. Secrets are to the artist/human being what the sap is to a tree. Both grow organically. Essentially, however, Beuys universal approach to art differed from the early Romantics in a fundamental regard. According to Pissarro, the Romantics went out of their ways to establish solidly a set of criteria that would distinguish art from non-artistic activities whereas Beuys ultimate purpose was the symmetric opposite of the Romantics: his aim was to abolish all distinctions between art and non-art. Art speaks for all. Joseph Beuys (b. 1921, Krefeld d. 1986, Düsseldorf) enrolled at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Art after World War II to study sculpture under Joseph Enseling, and later, Ewald Mataré. Fifteen years later, he was appointed a professor of Monumental Sculpture at the Düsseldorf Academy, where he was introduced shortly

4 thereafter to artist Nam June Paik. Paik would eventually collaborate with Beuys on a number of his Aktion pieces. The artist s first solo museum show was presented in the fall of 1967 by the Städtisches Museum, Mönchengladbach, which was a critical turning point in his career. In his lifetime, Beuys was invited to participate in five Documenta exhibitions (1964, 1968, 1972, 1977, and 1982); the Sculpture Projects Muenster (1977; the original site-specific work is now installed at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin); he represented Germany at the 37 th Venice Biennale in 1976; and his work was shown at the XV Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (1979). In 1974, Ronald Feldman invited Beuys to exhibit in the United States for the first time. He subsequently toured the country with his lecture series, Energy Plan for the Western Man, travelling to New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis. While in Chicago, Beuys performed his action DILLINGER outside the Biograph theater. A few months later, Beuys returned to the United States to create his action I Like America and America Likes Me, performing for three days inside the René Block Gallery. In November 1979, after three years of preparations by the artist, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presented a major retrospective of Beuys work, the only such exhibition to be organized in his lifetime. Since his death in 1986, Beuys work has been extensively exhibited on an international level, and many of the world s most important public institutions count his work among their permanent collections. Currently, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, has dedicated one of its fourth floor galleries to an ongoing exhibition dedicated to Joseph Beuys. The focus of this installation centers on the museum s recent acquisition of five vitrines created by the artist, with works dating from 1942 and Numerous awards were bestowed upon the artist, including an honorary doctorate from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (1976), the prestigious Lichtwark Prize, Hamburg (1977), the Thorn Prikker Medal of Honor, Krefeld (1978), membership into the Academy of the Arts, Berlin (1978), the Kaiser Ring, Goslar (1979), a member of honor of the Royal Academy of Arts, Stockholm, and the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize, Duisburg (1986). For more information on Joseph Beuys: Make the Secrets Productive please contact Jennifer Benz Joy at jjoy@pacewildenstein.com or Lauren Staub at lstaub@pacewildenstein.com, or call ###

Joseph Beuys: Make the Secrets Productive A selection

x 16-5/8" 74-7/8" x 14-5/8" x 20-1/2" Handaktion /

5 Joseph Beuys: Make the Secrets Productive A selection of works on view: Ofen, , bronze, oven: 20-1/4" x 15-3/4" x 15-3/8" Scala Libera, 1985, wood ladder, stone, wire, paint, table: 37-3/8" x 24-1/2" x 16-5/8" 74-7/8" x 14-5/8" x 20-1/2" Handaktion / Eckenaktion, Düsseldorf, December 5, 1968, 22-7/16" x 17-15/16"

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