until 11.09. | #3097ARTatBerlin | ARTES Berlin presents from 17th July 2021 the group exhibition ZERO+ with unique pieces, editions and collectors’ items by the fathers of the ZERO movement juxtaposed with selected works by contemporary conceptual artists.
Zero is the silence. Zero is the beginning. Zero is round. Zero is turning. Zero is the moon – the show brings together more than 30 works, including unique pieces, editions and collectors’ items by the fathers of the ZERO movement Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker and their circle, including Adolf Luther, Hermann Goepfert, Herbert Zangs, Lucio Fontana and Bernard Aubertin. The exhibition ZERO+ expands the positions with works by contemporary artists, including Wolfgang Flad, Fabian Gatermann and Thomas Röthel, who work in a comparable conceptual and stylistic way and bring the idea into the present with new techniques and media.
Adolf Luther, Hänge-Linse, 1980
Fabian Gatermann, Mobile, 2021
The objects shown have in common a clear and reduced visual language. An aesthetic and creative diversity that ranges from lens objects, coloured ceramic fields, nail trees and prints, lithography and serigraphy, mobile, mixed media and installation to assemblage and collage. Taken as a whole, the monochrome and sometimes polychrome objects illuminate a mostly German art production of the last 60 years and thus seem to document an evolution, a return and return of design principles and perceptions.
Heinz Mack, dynamische struktur, 1968, Tusche auf Bütten
In 1958 Mack and Piene founded the group ZERO in Düsseldorf, joined by Uecker in 1961. They sought a new beginning unencumbered by the past, the “zero hour”, and broke with the traditional ideas of art and the narrative of Informel and Tachism. Classical painting was declared dead and replaced by a creative process with media such as fire, reflection, light and shadow. ZERO became one of the most important avant-garde movements of the 20th century, which continues to influence artists consciously and unconsciously to the present day.
Wolfgang Flad, dark side of the moon, 2020, mixed media
The sun is Zero. Zero is white. The desert is Zero. The sky above Zero. The night -, Zero is flowing. The eye Zero. Navel. Mouth. Kiss. The milk is round. The flower Zero the bird. Silent. Floating. I eat Zero, I drink Zero, I sleep Zero, I wake Zero, I love Zero… reads the group’s manifesto, written by Piene, Mack and Uecker in 1963. The artists of the ZERO movement and the contemporary environment also practised and still practise a form of kinetic art whose elementary component is the examination of light, space and movement. What began in 1958 with the “zero hour” has the effect of a canonised idea right up to the present.
Vernissage: Saturday, 17 July 2021, 3:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 17 July to Saturday, 11 September 2021
To the gallery
Exhibition ZERO+ – ARTES Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst Berlin Contemporary Art Exhibitons Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin