Exhibition archive

Can images raise awareness of injustice and change the world? What is the relationship of photography and sculpture to violence, oppression, separation, and loss? The newexhibition at the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung showcased works that engage in social activism, sparking public dialogue about events that took place in hiding. The works express suffering, but also the power of resistance, as well as love and empathy.

The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung was celebrating the twentieth anniversary of its founding by opening a second art space. We invited visitors to join the celebrations with our exhibition held at the new BlackBox in the Parkstadt Schwabing and at our original location, the Villa in the heart of Schwabing. Showcasing internationally renowned artists as well as surprising young talents, the simultaneous display of WIDE OPEN. INS OFFENE at two venues presented hundred works by more than thirty artists of diverse cultural backgrounds, from South Africa, Iran, China, Cuba, the USA, and Europe.

What does photography tell us about the life experiences of the individual in the face of radical change in society? What visual languages are being invented by a younger generation of artists in China in search of their own self-understanding? The exhibition presented a selection of 70 photographs from the last 20 years by 14 artists from China. After Robert Rauschenberg’s Western look at China in the previous exhibition, these photographs showed interior views of the artists living in the country.

Under the title Primary Gestures, the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung showed photographs from Robert Rauschenberg’s 1980s series Study for Chinese Summerhall and contemporary installations using the medium of glass by Mona Hatoum, Hassan Khan, Jana Sterbak, and Terry Winters. Rauschenberg’s photographs, which read like records of everyday gestures in a changing Chinese society, were juxtaposed in the exhibition with sculptures that take everyday functional things like a knot or a circle in their works and transform these primary gestures into an artistic object.

Under the title Viewing the Other the foundation presented contemporary glass sculptures by international artists in the context of a series of thematic exhibitions. The title of the exhibition played with the double meaning of the words. The artists look at things from (an)other perspective and at the same time address their interest in the “other”: the self versus the other (person), the internal versus the external body, civilization versus wilderness, earth versus cosmos, life versus death. They are interested in perceiving the other, in the relationship between contemplation and recognition, in understanding.

Under the title lebenswelt | life-world, the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung showed contemporary sculptures by Japanese artists and photographs by the Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi. Subjective everyday experiences, temporal processes in nature, interpersonal communication are the focus of the artworks from Japan.

Continuing its thematic exhibitions, the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung showed contemporary photographs and sculptures. Under the title Life Is Not A Beach, this exhibition addressed the dark sides of life.

The second project of the exhibition series Master | Meister was dedicated to the German-Swedish artist Ann Wolff (born 1937). Its focus was on those sculptures that Ann Wolff created in the last five years specifically for this exhibition. On view in the garden was a new aluminum sculpture, older works as well as pastel drawings.

With the exhibition Where are you? Sculptures by Erwin Eisch, the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung launched the new exhibition series Master | Meister in addition to its thematic and country exhibitions. It introduced outstanding artists who use glass as a medium for artistic expression in their work. The first exhibition in the new series explored the multifaceted work of Erwin Eisch (born 1927), one of the pioneers of the studio-glass movement.

Love was and is one of the principal themes in art. Humans have a need to express love, and the pain of love, in a tangible form. Literature, music, paintings and sculptures created over the centuries are testimony of their never-ending attempts. The exhibition at the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung dealt with the many facets of love from a very special perspective: not only the bright, the welcome part of love was explored, but so is its hidden, secretive, and dark side. And all this was expressed using a material that is seldom seen in art displays: glass.

Journeys are connected with a yearning for the unknown. The yearning to experience life differently and the wish to experience oneself with a different view of the world are our means of transport, much more than a car, airplane, or ship. These themes interest the sculptor Jens Gussek in his works of glass and mixed media as well Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek in her photographs.

Tension and relaxation, strain and rest – the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung in Munich dedicated this exhibition to this complex of themes. Under the title Frozen-in Tension glass sculptures by significant international artists as well as works by the German photographer Jessica Backhaus were on view. The title of the exhibition – a technical term from the area of heat treatment – was multilayered: It addressed the subject as well as the material of the works. The sculptures made of hot liquid glass, now cold and solidified, seemed at first glance to rest in themselves. After looking at them longer or more closely, viewers observed that the state of rest, harmony, and calm turns into subtle anticipation, distraught anxiety, or an explosive emotional force.

Glass.China was a pioneering exhibition. It showed sculptures of significant Chinese artists together with photographs of China by the German film artist and photographer Ulrike Ottinger. The exhibition captured a rare and extraordinary epoch in the social and cultural development of China and is the first exhibition of an exciting artistic phenomenon that had not been seen outside of China to that date.

Quest and yearning were the subjects of this exhibition. In the show entitled The Heart Forever Yearns Away, the renowned foundation for contemporary glass displayed more than 30 glass sculptures. The internationally recognized artists Christiane Budig, Jens Gussek, Ursula Huth, and Sibylle Peretti made the objects especially for this thematic exhibition from Germany.

We are all experts on faces equipped with an amazing ability to distinguish between a thousand unknown faces and recognize their different feelings. The face has always played a significant role in man’s social life. And in art? With the first two exhibitions, the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung had focused on different countries, proving that glass had now become an art genre with a global character. The third exhibition with the explicit subject The face – Lost and Found Again, presented the manifold aspects and appearances of the human face, our privileged instrument of expression.

The second exhibition of the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung: One of the goals of the foundation is to introduce artists using the material glass to a larger circle of people interested in art. Therefore, exhibitions take place on a regular basis presenting different themes of contemporary studio glass and showing it as what it is – an own form of art. In the first part of the exhibition Glass – A New Experience the focus was on Czech and Eastern European artists. The second part showed objects from the Anglo-American world and Australia.

With the exhibition Glass – A New Experience the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, then still a young foundation, inaugurated its new exhibition rooms located in a former studio of an Art Nouveau villa in Munich, Schwabing. It presented itself for the first time to the public as a collector of glass sculptures. About 30 of them were shown, purchased within the last two years to set up the foundation’s collection of contemporary glass. The exhibition was supplemented by loans from the private collection of Alexander Tutsek and his wife Dr. Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek.