From the outside, the room looks like a construction site, as if the ventilation pipes and chimneys scattered across the floor have yet to be installed. This comparison would probably have pleased conceptual artist Charlotte Posenenske, to whom the new CCA Berlin Center for Contemporary Arts is dedicating its first exhibition. Her “Vierkantrohre Serie D” from 1967, a modular construction kit of hollow sheet metal bodies that can be freely assembled into ever new configurations, is emblematic of her brief creative phase as an artist, which spanned 12 years. Posenenske deliberately worked with industrial materials, longing to create pieces that had little resemblance to art. By not only handing over the final design of the work to curators and the public, but also allowing for the kits to be reproduced without limit – even after her death – she questioned central tenets of the art market: the importance of authorship and value.
But no matter how much she challenged her peers and the market, it wasn’t enough for herself. Faced with political developments from the Prague Spring to the Vietnam War, she noted in the art journal Art International in 1968, “It is difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that art can contribute nothing to solving urgent social problems.” That same year, at the age of 38, Posenenske decided to retire from the art world; she then studied sociology, began working as a social scientist and did not exhibit again until her death in 1985. Even if Posenenske herself doubted the energizing potential of her art, her work has been rediscovered and newly appreciated since the 2007 documenta. Her radical reductionism unites her audience and encourages them to perceive spaces in a new way. The team behind CCA – founder Fabian Schöneich and curators Sandra Teitge and Edwin Nasr – couldn’t have selected a better work to inaugurate their new space for contemporary art, which aims to promote exchange and discourse.
Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Diana Pfammatter / Credit: CCA Berlin – Center for Contemporary Arts
CCA – Center for Contemporary Arts, Kurfürstenstr.145, 10785 Berlin–Tiergarten; map
Charlotte Posenenske, Vierkantrohre Serie D, until 06.03.2022, Thu–Sat 11–18h
Online Program: Francis Alÿs, Patty Chang, Yvonne Rainer and Shirin Sabahi, 28.02.–06.03.2022
@ccaberlin
