NEUSPRÉCH

15 contemporary artworks on the relationship between art and language in dialogue with historical objects from the collections of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar

As part of the Theme Year 2022, the special exhibition in the Schiller Museum addresses what visual arts have to say about the topic of “language”.

NEUSPRÉCH: KUNST WIDERSPRICHT is an exhibition project by the Hamburg artists Oliver Ross and Simon Starke. It builds on an exhibition which was presented at the Centre for Artists’ Publications at the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst in Bremen in 2020. The concept was adapted and supplemented for the Klassik Stiftung Weimar to include 15 contemporary positions which examine language and writing as represented in the visual arts and juxtaposed in dialogue with historical objects.

The title of the exhibition refers to the eponymous euphemism in George Orwell’s novel 1984 – Newspeak – which describes a state-controlled reduction of language to manipulate people’s thinking. The novel can be interpreted as a warning against any form of mandated language regime.

NEUSPRÈCH aims to promote the emancipation of language through artistic methods. The exhibition highlights the impending degeneration of language borne from a technological compulsion to unify under a “Big Brother”. It takes a stand against marketing speak, Pegida speak, art-business speak, anti-terror speak, political speak, against the whole range of we/they speak, and counters it with a different kind of expression – the language of art.

Speaking one’s mind has become a controversial topic in itself and is seemingly backed into a corner. What does art have to say about it? One can argue that whenever art addresses a topic, it puts on a new and different face. The pieces featured in NEWSPÉAK hold themselves to account and dare to contradict – not so much with lofty speeches, but as pointed, concise and fragmentary statements.

The exhibition compiles manners of speaking and linguistic games expressing cultural unease, of an unapologetic, self-expressive and anarchical opposition to tacitly understood conventions.

Has something ever developed in Weimar that corresponds to the idea of Newspeak? And what ever became of (or happened to) its goal? Objects from the holdings of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar will supplement the exhibition and engage in entertaining dialogue with the contemporary artworks.

Visitors can look forward to poetological performances, text-image combinations, wall and floor installations, video presentations, photos, drawings, room assemblages and much more.

Featuring works by Armin Chodzinski, Hans-Christian Dany, Rüdiger Frauenhoffer, Jan Köchermann, Kyung-Hwa Choi-Ahoi, Peter Lynen, Kollektiv reproducts, Gunter Reski, Oliver Ross, Ingrid Scherr, Aleen Solari, Simon Starke, Andrea Tippel, Annette Wehrmann and Jan Voss.

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