Urban paradigm: Wolfsburg serves as case study for Kunstmuseum exhibition

A City As World Laboratory
’Wolfsburg Unlimited: A City As World Laboratory’ at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg explores our relationship with our cities. Pictured: part of Peter Bialobrzeski’s photographic series Wolfsburg Diary
(Image credit: Press)

The urban – as well as natural – environment we live in deeply influences our development and life. The Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg has set out to celebrate and explore our relationship with our daily urban context by taking the central German city as its case study and paradigm. 

The art museum's director, Dr Ralf Beil, selected several international artists to participate in the show, entitled 'Wolfsburg Unlimited: A City as World Laboratory', asking them to address questions about what a city is and what our perception of it can be. The resulting large-scale projects, created especially for the exhibition, are now on show at the Kunstmuseum and reflect the artists' musings on the city of Wolfsburg.

The entire museum will serve as exhibition space for this unique show – from its foyers and gallery spaces, to its entrance lobby and garden – spanning an intriguing variety of scales including a 1:1 scale drive-in theatre by Julian Rosefeldt and photographic installations by Eva Leitolf and Peter Bialobrzeski.

Among the other artists involved are Franz Ackermann, Nevin Aladağ, Christian Andersson, John Bock, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Christo, Don Eddy, Douglas Gordon, Heinrich Heidersberger, Peter Keetman, Anselm Kiefer, Rémy Markowitsch, Marcel Odenbach, Arnold Odermatt, Nam June Paik, Antoine Pesne, Peter Roehr, Didier Rittener, Werner Schroeter, Luc Tuymans, James Welling and Charles Wilp.

Open to the public from this Sunday, the exhibition looks into Wolfsburg's challenges and possibilities, from its amazing industrial history – the city is well known to be the home of Volkswagen – to its gardens and suburbs, exploring the global and local aspects of a modern city.

Five photographs created in 2015 .

The series consists of five photographs created in 2015 especially for the art museum's show

(Image credit: Press)

The city’s Volkswagen factory

The city's Volkswagen factory

(Image credit: Shot by Heinrich Heidersberger)

Hollerhafen area

Bms. Architekten's urban planning proposal for the Hollerhafen area 

(Image credit: Press)

The Psychomotor 10

Artist Rémy Markowitsch has produced a series called Psychomotor 10  

(Image credit: Press)

’Deutsches Symbol (VW)’ and created in 1994.

A piece by Marcel Odenbach, called 'Deutsches Symbol (VW)' and created in 1994, finds inspiration in the city's industrial heritage

(Image credit: Press)

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg website

’Wolfsburg Unlimited. A City as World Laboratory’ will run from the 24th April till the 11th September 2016

ADDRESS

Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Hollerpl. 1 
38440 Wolfsburg
Germany

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Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).