In the digital world, which, as it often appeared, suddenly and surprisingly opened up a good 15 months ago to confront individuals and large institutions with almost insurmountable difficulties, teachers and students at the Hochschule für Gestaltung knew each other well in advance out. Dealing creatively with computers and software is just as much a basic skill here as working with traditional artistic methods and traditional means of design. Crossing borders is a principle at this Offenbach facility. Free and applied arts, painting, sculpture and design, animation film, video installation, scenic space, photography: all this and much more is on the program of the HfG,and there has always been a lively exchange between the divisions and subject areas. The exhibition “From today's perspective. Discourses on the Future ”in the Frankfurt Museum Angewandte Kunst with around 30 positions that reflect an astonishing variety of aesthetics and content.
Michael Hierholzer
Culture editor of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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The HfG had already thought about an anniversary exhibition in autumn 2019, as its President Bernd Kracke says.
Matthias Wagner K, who teaches “Curatorial Studies” there, suggested showing the show in the museum he directed.
Then Corona dictated the terms.
Campus life largely came to a standstill, celebrations and events on the occasion of the HfG's founding 50 years ago had to be canceled or postponed.
Ultimately, the show was created under the impact of the pandemic.
She reinforced a number of questions that were certainly already there before: How do we want to live in the future, how do we want to communicate with one another, what will become more important for human interaction, what will take a back seat?
So the exhibition shouldn't look back, but rather look forward.
And even where the focus is on the history of the Hochschule für Gestaltung, which emerged from the Werkkunstschule in 1970, the focus is on topics that are now back on the agenda: Manifestos, record covers, newspaper articles, design examples from 1970 put us in an exhibition room into the past, but the demand for products and the design of the environment that have an impact on society are as relevant today as they were then.
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The show depicts the HfG in its entirety. After an “open call” for all teaching areas, 150 projects were received, from which 30 exemplary works were selected in a curatorial process in which an external advisory board was also involved. The show is divided into six sections, it begins with the here and now and ends with utopias. In between there is all sorts of irritations and preoccupation with the risks that mankind is facing. The exhibition architecture and design were of course developed at the university. The fact that time is not to be thought of as a linear course is expressed by the twisting tubular or hose-like shape that runs through the presentation. The word "future" should also be used in the plural: of course, nobody knows exactly what is to come,from brilliant prospects to the apocalypse, everything is included. Right at the beginning, in Paul Pape's pictures and the vacuum cleaner-like machine with which they were made, the visitor encounters the dust metaphor: The dust takes the air we breathe, but it is also what remains after the disintegration, and perhaps something completely new will emerge from it.
What will the HfG look like in 50 years? A group of young artists thought about this. They came to the conclusion: “Our only security for the future is failure.” However, this has turned into an installation whose absurd and amusing video images seem anything but failed, but rather masterfully deal with the cunning of the objects and the adverse conditions Avoid pandemic times.
In addition to the rediscovered ceramic art, graphic design that looks almost classic also has its place in this exhibition: In a present that devalues the book, it is more necessary than ever to emphasize the valuable elements of the written word. The young set designers, who have considered how the Richard Meier building can best be blown up, have a completely different approach. Places for holes and detonators have been marked. just like a demolition expert would. But it is not about something destructive, it is assured, but about not misunderstanding the fixed and given as final and irreversible.
A suit that makes it impossible to be detected by video surveillance systems in the cities; electronically generated distance markings that recede when entering until they signal: Up to here and no further; Consumer criticism, which at the same time calls for the consumption of artistic objects; Sprawling artistic landscapes from videos and paintings: there is a lot to look at. And plenty of food for thought.