Ignasi Aballí. 0–24 h (opening)

Following stations at the MACBA Museum for Contemporary Art, Barcelona, the Serralves Foundation, Porto, and the IKON Gallery, Birmingham, the ZKM now shows the works of the Catalonian artist Ignasi Aballí for the first time in Germany. The title work 0 –24h provides information about the themes round which Aballí’s work revolves. 0 –24h undertakes the representation of unprocessed, normally unperceived reality. It shows a film of a 24 hour surveillance camera in a museum. Even what happens outside the opening hours, the nocturnal activities, is put on show without cuts or alienation effects. Visitors thus become both anonymous spectators and guarantors of the nightly repose. This video projection is only one example of many that document Aballí’s obsessive gift of observation. He lays open strategies for the construction of reality in the most diverse media.
»Calendari« (2005) is a large-scale project. Daily, Aballí cut the title photographs out of the major Spanish newspaper El País so as to assemble them into a calendar. Removed from their context, the photos become a pictorial narrative of the outstanding events and personalities of the entire year. Another important theme round which Aballí’s creative activity has been formed is artistic self-reflection, as is suggested in the selection of motifs in 0 –24h. His works under the title Malgastar celebrate the opting out of painting and openly confront the exhibition visitor with this artistic concept.
This fascinating survey invites everyone to explore the narrative potential of media and to pursue the question about the conditions of painting in the 21st century.

Tours: Sat, 4 pm