New professors for Contextual Painting as of 1.10.: Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann

Alice Creischer studied philosophy and literature at the University of Düsseldorf and fine arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She was a master student of Fritz Schwegler in 1987/88. In her works, Creischer mainly deals with topics such as economy and money, power and powerlessness, as well as poverty and wealth. She also dealt with art theoretically, publishing in the magazines springerin, Texte zur Kunst and ANYP. In 2002 Alice Creischer curated the exhibition Gewalt ist der Rand aller Dinge / Violence on the Margin of All Things at the Generali Foundation in Vienna together with Andreas Siekmann. In 2006 she received the Norwegian Edward Munch Prize for Contemporary Art. A member of the jury was Roger Buergel, who invited Creischer to documenta 12 the following year. In 2010, Creischer curated the exhibition The Potosí Principle - How can we sing the song of the Lord in an alien land? for the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, together with Andreas Siekmann and Max Jorge Hinderer. The controversial exhibition was the first to show paintings from the Potosi School of Painting in a museum context, confronting the works from colonial Latin America of the 17th and 18th centuries with positions of contemporary artists such as Stephan Dillemuth and Chto Delat. The exhibition, which was subsequently shown at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin as well as at the Museo Nacional de Arte and the MUSEF in La Paz, developed its own exhibition grammar: in order to escape the museum's de-contextualization, the aestheticization by the "white cube", no picture was hung on the wall in the traditional way - instead, the curators developed their own system of installation. The "Potosi Principle" makes the claim that modernity and globalization were born in Latin America - and were already inextricably linked to colonial oppression and exploitation in the silver mines of Potosí. Creischer lives and works in Berlin and Buenos Aires.

Andreas Siekmann studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. In 2007 he took part in documenta 12 and thus for the second time after 2002 (documenta 11) in a documenta in Kassel, among others with the work Die Exklusive - Zur Politik des ausgeschlossenen Vierten. In 2007, at the Münster Skulptur.Projekte, he thematized with Trickle down. Der öffentliche Raum im Zeitalter seiner Privatisierung (Public Space in the Age of Privatization), he addressed urban art in the form of Buddy Bears and similar figures, in which urban space is appropriated by private companies. For this he crushed 13 figures with the help of a scrap metal press and placed a sphere formed from the remains together with the press in front of the Erbdrostenhof. Together with the artist Alice Creischer, Siekmann realized curatorial projects such Das Potosi Prinzip, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2010), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Museo Nacional de Arte, La Paz, (2011); Exargentina – Schritte zur Flucht von der Arbeit zum Tun, Museum Ludwig Cologne (2004), Palais de Glace Buenos Aires (2006); Die Gewalt ist der Rand aller Dinge, Generali Foundation (2002) in Vienna. Andreas Siekmann lives and works in Berlin. In his works he deals with the economization and privatization of public urban space. His works are in the tradition of the Cologne Progressives.

• We work together in curatorial and artistic projects and we publish together. We also have a single artistic practice.
• We both studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the 80s - with additional studies in philosophy, German studies (Alice) and history (Andreas).
• Starting in the 90s, we initially worked in Berlin in self-organized projects, writing essays and art criticism in the magazines Springerin, Texte zur Kunst, and Camera Austria.
• Starting in 2002, we became intensely involved with the political situation in South America. We did two long term projects in Argentina and Bolivia. This is where our situating in anti-colonial and economic-critical discourses comes from.
• We have criticized the art field not only through essays, but also through actions.
• Our own work is much concerned with critiquing and grasping global power structures, exploitation, the history and continuity of these structures. Because if you don't grasp something, you can't attack it.
• We strive to remember communist and anarchist movements and their artistic expressions so that we can strengthen ourselves on them.
• Our means of expression: Alice Creischer - collages, textiles, painting, poems and texts, short films, installations; Andreas Siekmann - drawings on paper and in the computer, watercolors, pictograms and their left history, plasticine figures and plasticine films, realized and unrealized art in public space.

https://kow-berlin.com/artists/alice-creischer
galeriebarbaraweiss.de/artists/andreas-siekmann/