Laura Owens, Ohne Titel, 2004,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
Since its founding aroud 30
years ago, the Deutsche Bank Collection has been committed to contemporary
art and has reacted to social developments. There has been another
constant, however: the main focus of the collecting activity has been
works on paper. During the course of Art Works, the collection has reduced
its number of graphic works to increasingly concentrate on drawings, a
medium suited to recording and communicating artistic notes and innovative
concepts and designs directly.
Matt
Saunders, Udo, 2004,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
Highly divergent versions of
the medium can be seen at the IBC-C: Claudia
and Julia Müller investigate the meaning of everyday cultural
forms of representation, folk art, and art history. For their pencil
drawings Two Saint Antoniuses, (2004) they combined two images of
the saint from paintings of the old masters Hieronymus
Bosch and Pieter
Brueghel the Younger as pairs on a single sheet. Through the doubling
of the image, the legend of the temptation of St. Anthony by demons is
turned into a farce.
Yoshitomo
Nara, Guston Girl, 2000,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
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While Leiko
Ikemura combines elements of Japanese and occidental culture in her
spontaneous, enigmatically poetic drawings, the young American Matt
Saunders appropriates images from pop culture in his homage to the
actor Udo Kier. Current positions
such as the neo-pop works of Takashi
Murakami and Yoshitomo
Nara shift the focus to Asia. Nara's Guston Girl (2006) in a
checked schoolgirl skirt and with a lit cigarette hanging from the corner
of her mouth frames a reference to the chain-smoking painter legend Philip
Guston. A selection of his drawings with their hallmark heavy-handed
contours can also be seen at the IBC-C.
Wawrzyniec
Tokarski, Doom, 1996,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
Yet the art in the
new building also directly addresses current social problems, as evidenced
in the works of Isa
Genzken, Wawa
Tokarski, and Francis
Alÿs, artists who critically examine the effects of
globalization, the media, and migration. Other artists such as Kara
Walker and William
Kentridge investigate themes like racism and question notions of
cultural and sexual identity. With digital photography and an altered view
of the world, the artistic means change as well.
Kara
Walker,
The Emancipation
Approximation (Scene #18) 1999/2000,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
A further development in
the treatment of the medium of paper can be seen at the IBC-C in the works
of young international artists such as Kai
Althoff, Tobias
Rehberger, and Ellen
Gallagher, who combine drawing and painting with various different
techniques and aesthetic and conceptual strategies. Art allows the viewer
to take part in time, as the word "contemporary" brings to expression. It
not only reflects upon social developments, but also often anticipates
them. Particularly among younger positions, this innovative, seismographic
aspect of art comes to expression particularly well. The presentation at
the IBC-C demonstrates the vital and multi-faceted way in which art has
been accompanying everyday working life at Deutsche Bank—as a collection
that continues to develop and renew itself over time.
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