Reenactment

A project of the Anna Polke Foundation with the Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal

In February 1964, the students Manfred Kuttner, Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter took a selection of their works from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf to the renowned Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal. They set up a presentation for gallery owner Rudolf Jährling in the villa's front garden, which went down in art history as the “front garden exhibition”. Lueg, Polke and Richter were invited to the group exhibition in the same year. The artists soon went their separate ways and their careers took very different paths, but the “Vorgartenausstellung” remains legendary.

The artist group KONSORTIUM (Lars Breuer, Sebastian Freytag, Guido Münch) approaches the historical action from the perspective of a current generation of artists in a filmic installation that will be presented at the Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal. In their work, the group explores various issues that concern artists then and now: Themes such as self-marketing, career strategies, existential concerns, questions of authorship and interests in the art world are addressed.

2025 marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the exhibition as well as that of the Galerie Parnass, an occasion for the Anna Polke Foundation to explore new perspectives on the “Vorgartenausstellung”. The project was prepared in cooperation with the ZADIK | Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung and a course at the University of Cologne. The KONSORTIUM exhibition will be accompanied by discussions with artists and academics in Wuppertal and Cologne.