Exhibition: Physical and Virtual Bodies
Date: February 16 - April 21

Portraits and postures, acquainted through media, advertisement or (art) history, are marked with the stigmata of the accustomed, the familiar and the every-day. They not only strongly shape our ideas of the (human) body but also create and reinforce viewing patterns and clichés of the perception of the very same.
 
Since the arrival of modernism artists were intensely preoccupied with exploring the capacities of images, their engraved narratives and their representation of bodies and gender in contemporary culture. In the 1990s new modes of digital processing and unlimited reproduction opened new possibilities for image (re-)production. The imagery of media (MTV), blue screen techniques and ways of digital image manipulation infiltrated contemporary ways of processing images.
 
The exhibition Physical and Virtual Bodies includes a selection from the past two decades, departing from the museum’s collection and invited artists, who present recently produced work. By the use of the media of photography, film and installations these artists confront and subvert the contemporary images of the everyday world and liberate their representational aspects. By applying different strategies, the presented artists endow pictures with new capacities and question the production of meaning.
 
By all means the artists aim to recreate or capture the body. But by reinventing its form they cause changes, certain distortions in the translation of often-familiar images and motives. Via mechanisms of abstraction, re-creation, appropriation or absence they challenge our ideas of the body. These bodies (present or sensed by their absence) become independent from their accustomed context and create a charged space between picture and the imagination of the viewer.
 
The exhibition is curated by Kris Dittel and Stephanie Seidel, and is realized in the framework of followup,  a program for curators, based at Schloss Ringenberg (Hamminkeln), which gives young artists and curators the opportunity to build up their expertise over the course of a year. followup works with various partners, including the MMKA, in the border area between the Netherlands and Germany.
 
Participating artists:
Gabriele Beveridge (1985, HKG), Barbara Bloom (1950, USA), Bonnie Camplin (1970, UK), Fleur van Dodewaard (1983, NL), Cheryl Donegan (1962, USA), Andrea Fisher (1955, USA-1997, UK), Nan Hoover (1931, USA-2008, D), Inez van Lamsweerde (1963, NL/USA), Rachel Niffenegger (1985, CA/NL), Lidwien van der Ven (1963, NL), Barbara Visser (1966, NL), Christoph Westermeier (1984, D/NL) 

The exhibition is financially supported by the Mondriaan Foundation (Mondraan Fonds)