Exhibition "Rudolf Bonvie - Dialog" at Galerie Priska Pasquer

DIALOG | THE EXHIBITION
at Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne

Rudolf Bonvie is regarded as one of Germany's first media artists, one whose work explores the function and impact of communication with images. In the 1970s and 1980s, his working material included photographs found in the press. Since he first started working on his "Stockmarket Works" in 2001 he concentrates his artistic work on the internet and, since 2012, on the Tumblr blog portal.

In the Rudolf Bonvie "Dialog" exhibition at Galerie Priska Pasquer, the thirteen-piece image sequence of the same name from 1973 is juxtaposed with the artist's latest Tumblr works, thus building a bridge within his creations over a period of 40 years.

RUDOLF BONVIE | DIALOG

One of Rudolf Bonvie's artworks that received a lot of attention online is called "Dialog" from 1973. It shows 13 pictures of two hands in varying stages of nearness to each other. Attention means that it has been taken from his website by somebody who put in on tumblr. There it has been reblogged over 50.000 times to this date. Due to it's popularity on the internet, the pictures from the series "Dialog" appear frequently in his Tumblr works.

In our eponymous exhibition we show the original "Dialog" series from 1973 as well as the "Tumblr works", thus creating a bridge between the origin artwork and its translation and transformation to another artwork in the digital age. Over the course of this transformation Priska Pasquer and Rudolf Bonvie have decided to make an experiment on occasion of the exhibition in order to understand the value of art to the digital natives.

DIALOG | THE EXPERIMENT

Priska Pasquer and Rudolf Bonvie are excited to announce the beginning of an experiment that is supposed to constitute a link between the virtual and the real world of the young, art affine and digitally communicative generation.

Therefore Rudolf Bonvie created an "Experiment" Edition of 1000 of the picture "Dialog 3" (inkjet print, 40 x 30 cm) that is offered by Priska Pasquer at an affordable price of 49,-€.

The idea behind this was the question, what value real pieces of art have in these digital days, where everything can be shared or liked easily. Rudolf Bonvie came up with this question because the pictures from his "Dialog" sequence have attracted a lot of attention online, meaning that they have been reblogged and liked over 60.000 times on Tumblr to this date. So how does the digitalization affect the demand of this generation to actually own something haptic, that is fixed in their virtual universe already? Can a picture make it's way back from the screen to the wall?

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Kamera & Schnitt: Ali Mokhtari
www.zoomm.me
www.youtube.com/user/OnlineRedakteurKoeln

PRISKA PASQUER: Yes, we are currently in my gallery, Galerie Priska Pasquer in Cologne.

We are showing a Rudolf Bonvie exhibition that is opening today.

The exhibition is called “Dialog”.

My gallery specialises in 20th century and contemporary art

and always in a form that involves upheaval, i.e. 1920s and 1930s, 1970s,

and now works created after 2000.

And we are now exhibiting works by Rudolf Bonvie, one of the first ever media artists who,

back in the 1970s, explored the phenomenon of “pictures”,

how pictures affect us and how our perception changes,

how paparazzi use pictures, the power that pictures have

and that is the theme of this exhibition.

FERDINAND BRUEGGEMANN: Of course, anyone who works using media these days can no longer concentrate solely on the printed form.

The internet is the key medium that takes centre stage.

RUDOLF BONVIE: The most important thing, of course, is to find a kind of interaction between me and my followers.

This means that I am channelling the creativity of my followers into my work to a certain extent.

Ultimately, it all comes down to Joseph Beuys’ long-established idea that we are all artists in a way

and that is what we dreamed of in the 1970s and 1980s.

It is always a mixture between my works and the selected works of my followers.

This creates, again and again, new contexts between the individual works

and that is what I find so exciting.

That the work does not stem from me alone, but also from others, including younger people,

who naturally have another view of the world.

And here, I quote Nietzsche on death. These are all quotes from Zarathustra that I have integrated in this work.

There are many blogs on tumblr kept by depressives and potential suicides and these are following me now.

PRISKA PASQUER Does that work? How will people continue to relate to art?

Do they have to be able to touch it or is it enough to view it on the internet?

RUDOLF BONVIE: Young people today have another consciousness …

Something seems to have changed in their brains. They don’t get as tired so quickly …

And 30 years ago, the likes of us would not have been able to cope with such a flood of images.

FERDINAND BRÜGGEMANN: What exactly is the experiment now?

RUDOLF BONVIE: The experiment is simply this question:

Do my followers in Argentina or Brazil want to have the picture on their walls or is it enough to have it on their laptops? That is the question.

FERDINAND BRÜGGEMANN: Yes, the art “evangelist” – and she told us that the tumblr people thought that Rudolf Bonvie was in his mid-20s.

RUDOLF BONVIE: Yes, that was best!

PRISKA PASQUER: We live in a digital age and this age is all about sharing,

about being inclusive rather than exclusive

And with the 20 | 13 project, we are now trying to identify the kind of art that fits with this age.

And this exhibition marks the beginning of 20 | 13.