Veit Stratmann - Opening reception

On Saturday, April 25, you can attend the opening of an exhibition based in umbrella's outdoor area—a space with a strange, almost undefined role. It is not a classic courtyard, not a garden, not a field that one “uses,” and not the exhibition space itself. Yet it is central.

Here, the question is not just what art is, but what it does to a place. Can an artistic gesture find its justification precisely in a space's unclear status – and can the ambiguity itself become material? Can an addition make the space even more indeterminate, rather than more “finished”?

Stratmann also focuses on the strange users of the space: you are no longer just a passerby, but not quite a visitor yet either. The exhibition asks whether this micro-pause can become artistic material, and whether a gesture can create a zone of permanent ‘suspension’ that rubs off on those who move through it.

Veit Stratmann (*1960) is internationally recognized and has been working since the 1990s with political and sociocultural issues concerning public and private space. He lives and works in Paris and teaches at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. His works have been shown at a number of prominent institutions in Europe and internationally.

The exhibition is open from April 25 to October 25.