Hubert Kiecol
Golden
€ 29 incl. VAT
Edited by Eva Schmidt
Design by Hubert Kiecol with Björn Roth, LUP AG Cologne
Translation Tim Connell
Snoeck-Verlagesgesellschaft mbH, Cologne
The catalougue is published on hte occcasion of the exhibition at MGKSiegen in 2010.
Today, as was the case at the beginning of the 1980s, it is apparent that Kiecol’s artistic concern is different from the minimalist ideas of an earlier generation. Sculpture simply occupied an indifferent space in the cases of Carl Andre or Donald Judd, it was simply there, on its own, not addressing the viewer. On no account was it a symbol for anything else or even possibly an image for something else. Metaphors or associations were deemed reprehensible. Kiecol’s work, by contrast, is rich in association, and yet it is also evident that the emotional labour of association, the investigation of the archetypical, is left to the viewer. The artist’s work is the reduction of form and the concomitant presentation of all the implemented means. The delegation of production, as suggested by conceptual art, doesn’t exist in Kiecol’s world. For him, an artist is someone who intuitively arrives at a particular form via experience.
Admittedly, for the sake of inclusivity, one shouldn’t forget what differentiated Kiecol’s work from the beginning from the work of many artists of his generation, namely their use of the postmodern means of irony.
It is the interplay of concentrated form and openness that connects Kiecol’s sculpture to his twodimensional work. How can one still create a sense of pictorial perception by means of extreme reduction in form? How can one still create meaning with the most minimal forms? Kiecol’s work revolves around questions of this kind; you get the feeling that it is a bit of a balancing act. Reviewing many years of artistic practice, it becomes evident that there is such a thing as the ethic of production. There are themes, preferences for particular materials that were followed through for a certain period, and then there are hiatuses. Variations only exist until such time as artistic “problems” have been resolved. Interests change tack, but the work itself abides as an extremely reduced network of signs that presents us with the creation of space and image. The creation of moods carries with it an enormous risk which Kiecol embraces.
ISBN 3-978-940953-50-6
32 × 24 cm
100 pages
Softcover
German
