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Martin Kippenberger Heavy Burschi (Heavy Boy)
Kölnischer Kunstverein, Köln, 1991. First Edition. Quarto. Softcover
stiff wraps. Fine condition with very limited shelf wear.
Scarce catalogue for the exhibition held at the Kölnisher Kunstverein,
Now. 10 - Dev. 22, 1991. Kippenberger’s exhibition,
Heavy Burschi, brings together many of the defining themes of
his practice, both in terms of media and its process of production.
Kippenberger asked an assistant to make paintings based
on images from all his catalogues, but he was unsatisfied with
the finished canvases. he ordered all fifty-one paintings to be destroyed,
but first had each photographed, reprinted to its original
size and framed, exhibiting them together with the remnants of
the paintings in a skip, as a single installation. Kippenberger’s
actions echo the heroic gestures of destruction and renewal that
run throughout Modernism, particularly in the work of post-war
German artists such as Joseph Beuys and Anselm Kiefer. With
his familiar barbed irony, however, Kippenberger’s gesture is
anything but an affirmation of the redemptive power of the artist.
Heavy Burschi exposes the violence inherent in acts of destruction,
emptying the gesture of its heroic connotations of cultural,
political and spiritual rebirth.
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