This year we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the GfZK am Johannapark. Against the backdrop of the political and social changes after 1989, social and ecological sustainability was already a central concern when the GfZK was founded in 1990. This is also reflected in its collection, which was first presented at the opening of the GfZK Villa in 1998. Since then, the idea of an open house where artists and the public meet and where relevant contemporary issues are negotiated has unfolded in a variety of ways.
With Things That Were Are Things Again, we are attempting to realize a climate-neutral collection exhibition. Together with artists and designers, we are testing sustainable strategies that reduce the GfZK's energy consumption and enable cycles of recycling. The selected works - including installations, photographs, paintings, sculptures, video works and interventions in the GfZK garden - testify to the careful use of resources and focus on social and cross-species interaction. In addition to the collection's holdings, we have invited local and international artists, including Kent Chan, Katarína Dubovská, Inga Kerber and Sean Snyder, whose works illustrate the technological, political, economic and cultural dimensions of climate change.
The title of the exhibition is borrowed from a work by Dan Peterman, an important representative of sustainable artistic practice whose works were purchased for the collection at an early stage. Things That Were Are Things Again stands for a preoccupation with transformation processes. In connection with the history, but also the self-image of the GfZK, this is always linked to the question of what impulses art can provide for respectful coexistence.
