In Deutschland: reloaded (II)

Following the successful show In Deutschland: reloaded (I) earlier this year, conceived by Klaus Honnef, the second exhibition in the series, In Deutschland: reloaded (II), curated by Wilhelm Schürmann, will open for Gallery Weekend Berlin 2016. While Honnef presented a condensed selection of images oriented closely on the original 1979 Bonn exhibition at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, his former co-curator Wilhelm Schürmann expands the show’s spectrum in hindsight. His point of departure is a reconsideration of the situation then, more than 35 years ago, from today’s perspective: how can a historical project be brought up to date? Together, the readings – Honnef’s retrospective and Schürmann’s revision – create a comprehensive picture of this pathbreaking artistic tradition in Germany.
Schürmann’s view focuses on documentary perspectives in West and East Germany since the late 1970s into the present and includes the artists Sibylle Bergemann, Arno Fischer, Jochem Hendricks, Karl-Ludwig Lange, Thomas Leuner, Rudi Meisel, Simone Nieweg, Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer, Helga Paris, Peter Piller, Arne Schmitt, Harald Schmitt, Petra Wunderlich and Ulrich Wüst.
The basis of Schürmann’s revision is the archeology of the everyday in its various facets: the representation of agricultural or manmade landscapes (Nieweg, Wunderlich), GDR photographers still unknown in 1979 (Paris, Wüst), different images of transition (Lange, Leuner, Fischer, Bergemann, Meisel) that portray the political turn and Berlin’s emergence as the new center. With consideration for the new media landscape and a sense of history, artists such as Hendricks and Piller take up images from the 1970s or precisely and soberly dissect today’s status quo (Schmitt).
In this collection of images spanning the last forty years, Schürmann brings together pictures both created and found in contrary political systems. All have eluded any official perspective.