Crossing Lines

László Moholy-Nagy, Right Hand in Green, May 20th 1926
Courtesy of Hattula Moholy-Nagy

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus School in Weimar Kunsthalle Osnabrück will present Crossing Lines, an exhibition developed by artist and educator Jan Tichy and curator Christian Oxenius.

The concept for the exhibition, opening August 24^th, takes its initial inspiration from an unusual find in LászlóMoholy-Nagy’s estate: a series of life-size print of his hand, as well as of other „Bauhäusler“, taken in May 1926 by the great Hungarian artist and leading figure of the Bauhaus. While probably the result of Moholy-Nagy’s interest in palmistry and spiritual practices, not at all uncommon within the Bauhaus, we cannot be certain about the precise reason that lead a group of thirteen individuals (among which Kandisky, Brauer, Brandt and Moholy-Nagy himself) to produce these documents never exhibited before collectively. The handprints in this context contain a future prediction, told at a time in which modernism, as product of the Positivism of the 19th century, was both at its peak and yet was already showing signs of the fundamental flaws that led to its crisis, visible to this day. Their aura of mystery and mysticism, as well as the sense of community they express, makes the setting of the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, as former monastery, an ideal space in which to unfold a series of questions present in the many histories of the Bauhaus but too often missing from its public image.

These documents served as inspiring elements for a dialogue between Tichy and Oxenius leading to a selection of contemporary artists that with their practice and through the narratives they develop crossed the lines separating the complexity of the Bauhaus as a place for “experimentation (line of the introduction)” with its common narrative as a site of production of rationalist modernism. The contribution of Heba Y. Amin, Jakob Gautel, Olaf Holzapfel, Reuven Israel, Kostis Velonis and Tichy himself although developed independently entail a form of collective thinking and action, reflected in the spatial arrangements taken in the Kunsthalle and in the conceptual underpinning of the works.

The title Crossing Linessuggests this interplay between positions and narratives in the works presented in Osnabrück but serves also as an opening to the collaboration with the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Chicago. The renown Chicago based institution, founded by Moholy-Nagy in 1937, will see a parallel exhibition to Crossing Linesheld in the Carr Chapel designed by "Bauhäusler" Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the United States, and opening in September as an extension and expansion of the dialogue with the hand-prints as well as a publication, the first occasion in which these objects are extensively discussed in literature.

The works on display will include both previously exhibited artworks as well as new productions designed specifically for the occasion.

https://kunsthalle.osnabrueck.de