Cracked. White. Open

“An image comes to mind of a white, ideal space that, more than any single picture, may be the archetypal image of 20th-century art.”

Inside the White Cube, Brian O’Doherty

Being able to engage with a “new” gallery space is an exercise that challenges the ways in which both artists and curators physically work with the given conditions of the exhibition space – an exercise which equally raises fundamental questions concerning the parameters that shape traditional exhibition environments. The exhibition “CRACKED. WHITE. OPEN.” – curated by Tilo Schulz and Marc Glöde – addresses these spatial conditions and ways of dealing with them, clearly questioning the artistic strategies that inform paintings, wall pieces, sculptures, and installations. As the object of artistic discourse, the wall can be tackled aggressively, reflected upon, historicized, or even sacralized. Yet in all instances, the white (and thus allegedly neutral) space shows the construct of its own neutrality, simultaneously revealing the very potentials of the exhibition space. In the process, the gallery likewise becomes a space in which innovative artistic potentials develop and unfurl, or an analytical laboratory where the limits of one’s own artistic position can be challenged and explored. Indeed, the setting of the white wall must be questioned in order to dismantle the architectural preconditions and lead them into the open. 

Amidst the tension field of these perspectives, the exhibition “CRACKED. WHITE. OPEN.” investigates the manifold conditions and parameters of the spatial, thus creating a resonant stage between the exhibition space and artistic practice.