DEINE KUNST (1) The Crisis of the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg: Solution and Dissolution / The Liquidator

Beginning on February 9th, 2019, the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg will show an unusual new presentation of its collection in multiple parts. Michael Müller was invited to make a personal selection from the inventory and to stage the chosen works for the audience for two years in the castle’s west wing. Michael Müller decided not to show only one exhibition but to present the collection in eight consecutive versions and changing contexts, which focus on various issues in terms of both form and content. The individual versions are curated in at times eccentric and extremely “work-like” ways. Michael Müller and his team even changed the exhibition rooms down to the smallest detail.

The foyer was equipped with a “museum shop”, among other things, which is supposed to house 500 (!) books over the course of the series, all being newly produced especially for the exhibition. The walls of the rooms are covered with gray cloth; the rooms themselves remain strangely empty; only an echo sounder resonates in the staircase, lonely, as though in search of meaning. (An echo sounder serves to navigate the ocean and to measure its depth. Sound pulses are emitted, reflected, and sent back to their point of departure.) Moreover, the opening version that presents the collection is meant to be traversed with noise-cancelling headphones, on loan at the entrance. This allows visitors to view silent spaces of possibility, boundaries, frames, stages. A sound installation—“The Voices”—is presented soundlessly in the silver cellar, the Silberkeller. What remains are basal, fundamental forms—silent loudspeakers, minimalistic.
Ultimately, little remains “as it was.” In the first version, countless questions arise. Is the collection in “crisis”? There is suspense about everything that is yet to come. When does an exhibition context become a work of art? What is shown when almost nothing is shown? In short: Almost everything is taken apart. It will be reassembled later.