Exhibition archive

Robert Grosvenor

To mark the 70th anniversary of documenta, the Fridericianum is presenting Robert Grosvenor’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany and the first comprehensive museum presentation of his work in Europe in two decades. Born in New York in 1937, the artist, who participated in documenta in 1977 and 1987, developed his sculptural practice in the 1960s, when minimal art was emerging as an artistic movement. He took part in the exhibitions Primary Structures (1966) at the Jewish Museum in New York and Minimal Art (1968) at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague—two milestones of the movement. His early works are characterized by a reduced formal language that combines industrial materials and clear geometric structures. However, his practice continued to evolve. Grosvenor’s work, which also includes drawings and photographs, therefore defies categorization and captivates with its idiosyncrasy, range, and uncompromising nature. His oeuvre often combines strict construction with improvised elements, and technical precision with poetic openness. Abstract works meet seemingly more concrete, more tangible objects that resemble architectures or vehicles removed from time.
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MARIO GARCÍA TORRES: A HISTORY OF INFLUENCE

Many of the works by Mario García Torres—born in Monclova in 1975 and now living in Mexico City—take their cue from the pieces and essence of historical artists, in particular exponents of Conceptual Art, Arte Povera, and institutional critique. Using various media such as film, slide projection, photography, sound, text, sculpture, or painting, he analyzes artistic material—works, documents, attitudes, strategies, and myths—in order to devise both new history and (hi)stories. By doing so, García Torres is able to open up unusual perspectives on the past and question purportedly universal truths. His works are often imbued with a subtle, astute sense of humor.
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Lee Kit

Lee Kit, born in Hong Kong in 1978 and now living in Taiwan, came to prominence in the first several years of this century with paintings that are not just art objects but also everyday items: He painted stripes and checkerboard patterns on materials like textiles to use them temporarily in a domestic environment as curtains and tablecloths or outdoors as picnic blankets or banners. Using materials, especially in this latter form, in the context of the protest movements in Hong Kong, injected a decidedly political aspect—one that is considered a key feature of his works still today. Another central characteristic is the suspension of genre-specific boundaries, something that already came to notable fruition in Lee’s early formulations and still today finds ever-stronger expression in his exhibitions. In his presentations, he melds his paintings, sculptures, films, photography, music, and language to form a single unit. The results are intense, immersive worlds of image, thought, and experience that are as imbued with a delicate poetry as they are with the desire to proclaim a social utopia. The Fridericianum presents Lee’s first solo exhibition in Germany—a walk-on synthesis of the arts.
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ULLA WIGGEN OUTSIDE / INSIDE

The Fridericianum in Kassel honors the work of Ulla Wiggen with a comprehensive survey exhibition. The work of the artist, who was born in 1942 in Stockholm, is characterized by outstanding formal and conceptual acuity. Spanning six decades, Wiggen’s oeuvre comprises four distinct bodies of paintings: renderings of circuit boards and other electronic components, portraits, medical imagery showing bones and inner organs of the human body and works that focus on the iris of the eye.
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Melvin Edwards

Under the title Some Bright Morning, the Fridericianum is presenting the first extensive solo exhibition by Melvin Edwards at a European institution. Featuring over 50 works, the show offers the opportunity to get to know the diverse abstract language of form of this sculptor, installation artist, and draftsman.
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Tauba Auerbach TIDE

Tauba Auerbach, born in 1981 in San Francisco and now living in New York, traces the visible and invisible connections, structures, and rhythms that shape our universe. In addition, Auerbach orients their artistic gaze toward the micro- and macrocosmic that constitute the complexity of being.
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DIAGONAL PRESS LIBRARAY

The publishing project Diagonal Press was founded by Tauba Auerbach in 2013 and aims to continuously give more space to their experiments in the fields of typography, book design and production, as well as the applied arts. The spectrum of its output ranges from books, calendars, posters, and flags to toys, accessories, and jewelry.
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Roberto Cuoghi

Roberto Cuoghi, who was born in Modena in 1973 and now lives in Milan, is hard to pin down as an artist. His practice encompasses almost the entire spectrum of artistic genres, taking countless guises and reflecting the artist’s preoccupation with diverse, sometimes seemingly contradictory themes and issues.
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Toba Khedoori

For over twenty-five years Toba Khedoori, born in Sydney in 1964 and now living in Los Angeles, has been developing a body of work that can be described as one of the most outstanding and singular contributions to contemporary art.
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Martine Syms

Born in 1988 in Los Angeles, Martine Syms has emerged in recent years as one of the defining figures in the younger, international discourse on art. Developed especially for Kassel and entitled Aphrodite’s Beasts, the exhibition presents the artist’s work to a broader audience in Germany for the first time by means of film installations, photographs, site specific interventions, and objects.
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Vincent Fecteau

Since the early 1990s, Vincent Fecteau has worked with simple, sometimes everyday materials such as papier-mâché, foamcore, champagne corks, popsicle sticks, and shells to produce a body of work comprising sculptures and collages in a wide variety of forms. The Fridericianum presented the first institutional solo exhibition in Germany dedicated to the artist, who was born in 1969 in Islip, New York.
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Tarek Atoui Waters’ Witness

October 3, 2020 – May 24, 2021

The Fridericianum presented “Waters’ Witness”, the first solo exhibition in Germany of the work of Atoui, who was born in Beirut in 1980 and now lives in Paris.
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Forrest Bess

February 15, 2020 – September 6, 2020

The Fridericianum presented the first exhibition in Germany of the artist’s work for over three decades. The show allowed visitors to rediscover this outstanding exponent of postwar art, who is as relevant for contemporary discourse as he is enigmatic.
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Rachel Rose

October 26, 2019 – January 12, 2020

In recent years, Rachel Rose has quickly risen to prominence for her compelling video installations and films. In her work, the artist often explores how our relationship to landscape, storytelling and belief systems around mortality are inseparably linked to one other.
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Lucas Arruda Deserto-Modelo

June 6 – September 8, 2019

“Deserto-Modelo” is the title of the Fridericianum’s presentation of the first larger-scale institutional solo show by the artist Lucas Arruda, who was born in São Paulo in 1983. Arruda’s work comprises paintings, prints, light installations, slide projections and films.
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Ron Nagle Euphoric Recall

June 6 – September 8, 2019

For more than six decades now, Ron Nagle has been producing works characterized by the fact that they manifest a maximum height of 20 cm. Despite their limited heights, these works, made among other things of ceramics, plastics, glazing agents and car paint, boast a presence and an effect which could hardly be more impressive.
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