Invited Artists



Pawel_Althamer | Michael_Asher | Nairy_Baghramian | Guy_Ben-Ner | Guillaume_Bijl | Martin_Boyce | Jeremy Deller | Michael_Elmgreen und Ingar_Dragset | Hans-Peter_Feldmann | Dora_Garcia | Isa_Genzken | Dominique_Gonzalez-Foerster | Tue_Greenfort | David_Hammons | Valérie_Jouve | Mike_Kelley | Suchan Kinoshita | Marko_Lehanka | Gustav_Metzger | Eva_Meyer und Eran_Schaerf | Deimantas_Narkevicius | Bruce_Nauman | Maria_Pask | Manfred_Pernice | Susan_Philipsz | Martha_Rosler | Thomas_Schütte | Andreas_Siekmann | Rosemarie_Trockel | Silke_Wagner | Mark_Wallinger | Clemens von Wedemeyer | Annette_Wehrmann | Pae_White

 


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Annette Wehrmann

* 1961 bei Hamburg, lives and works in Hamburg




Project: Aaspa - Wellness am See

“Anyone who has gone swimming on a warm summer’s day only to emerge from the water not like a snow-white swan, but covered in mud […] will rejoice at the sight of the new municipal swimming baths opened to the public this morning,” wrote the Münsterischer Anzeiger on June 11, 1888.

Now, well over a century later, aquatic pleasures are still all the rage. A center dedicated to fitness and well-being will soon be built at this prime location on the shores of Lake Aa. The construction site has been prepared, containers and distribution boxes are in place, and the trees have been wrapped in plastic sheets to prevent damage from construction vehicles. The sign posted at the site shows us how the building will eventually look – a dome-shaped, perfectly round glass structure, supported by struts. In bright red letters, it reads “AaSpa – Health and Fitness at the Lake.” At this very spot AaFit+Well, Ltd. is building a spa hotel, and what passers-by see is the first stage in its construction. Once completed, the complex will cover most of the surrounding meadows. Already, a hoarding is blocking a sizeable part of Münster’s local recreational area – a no-go zone created by the artist. During the exhibition, as the work begins the building site will change and grow. But whether this paradisiacal spa center will really be built is something that the visitors will not learn until the end of the season. Perhaps along with the summer the construction site will disappear altogether, leaving nothing behind – except, perhaps, a bit of a shock.


Biography

Annette Wehrmann has produced performances and temporary, critical interventions in urban settings since the 1990s. Her „Blumensprengungen“, a series of minor detonations she provoked in public flower beds in downtown Hamburg, are volatile, poetic and ironical comments on contemporary urban furnishings. In the early 1990s, she invited passers-by in Frankfurt/Main to exchange objects for a work of art. They received in return, a white plastic bag filled with water, which was larded with coloured pins. Her flea-market / market agency proposal for „bridge – the map is not the territory“ (1997) was a comment on the increasing privatisation of public space. On the Fleetmarkt, a privately owned square in downtown Hamburg, she erected a conical, wooden structure over an existing sculpture. The cone reminds the observer of a minimalist sculpture. It served as the market office for a planned, non-commercial, weekly flea market. The existing sculpture became the central pillar of the market office hut. With the title „Kunst der Tarnung und Enttarnung – Der Turm“ Wehrmann redesigned for the BUGA show in Potsdam in 2001 a former East German border tower, which she turned into a mirror gallery.

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