German Artist Christoph Mügge Invites Bluegrass to 'See It Again Here!'
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 10, 2016) — The Bolivar Art Gallery will present an exhibition of work by German artist Christoph Mügge. "See it again here!," running Feb. 12-25 at the gallery, will be free and open to the public, as well as several other events presented in conjunction with the artist's residency at the University of Kentucky School of Art and Visual Studies.
In a mix of trashy and dramatic absurdity, Mügge's work grapples with ideas of overstimulation, surplus and overproduction that are at the center of our culture and the organization of our knowledge. He readily disrupts principles for recognizable objects, whether these are food packages, pill boxes or garbage bins. Mügge has created a broad artistic vocabulary for his works that manifest themselves in the borderland between drawing, painting, sculpture and installation where the boundaries are gradually eroded and one category is absorbed into another.
Mügge's complex installations maintain a kind of sabotage, ad-hoc aesthetic of improvisation, error and un-usefulness without undoing the integrity of materials and gravity or the transparency of procedure that he has asserted as axioms of historically informed sculpture. A consistent subject in his work is technical constructs or containers leaking amorphous outgrowths. These are often materialized as painted constructions of waste wood combined with other elements.
The way the artist seeks to deconstruct familiar everyday life and give it a new significance is a constant in his work and in his current installation at Bolivar Art Gallery, located in the new UK Art and Visual Studies Building. Through repurposing discarded materials that were recently part of life, like cereal dispensers and overhead projectors, as well as imagery of contemporary American consumer culture, Mügge's installation invites the viewer to move among these diverse elements to grasp meaning through their placement — to "see it again here" like the exhibition title implies. In addition, his solo exhibition will include a display of a new edition of screen prints that were created with the help of UK students.
During his residency, Mügge will also present an artist talk at noon Thursday, Feb. 11, at Bolivar Art Gallery. An opening reception for the artist and his show will immediately follow the lecture from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The artist talk and reception are both free and open to the public.
Born in Bonn, Germany, in 1983, Mügge studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where he graduated in 2013 after studying under Professor Richard Deacon. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in German venues, including Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen (Gelsenkirchen); Kunsthaus Rhenania (Cologne); Kunstverein Bochumer Kulturrat (Bochum); K21, Museum Kunstpalast and Philara (Düsseldorf); 6. Höhler Biennale (Gera); and Galerie Gerken (Berlin), as well as Concordia in Enschede, Netherlands. He has been awarded with residencies at Aabenraa Artweek (Aabenraa, Germany), the French-German artist exchange "PASSAGE" at isdaT beaux-arts (Toulouse, France), Antonie-Leins-Künstlerhaus (Horb a.N., Germany), ARE (Enschede, Netherlands), Schlossbergstipendium (Böblingen, Germany), Serlachius Residency (Mänttä, Finland) and Platform (Vaasa, Finland).
Patrons may visit "See it again here!" and other exhibits at the Bolivar Art Gallery from 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday.
The UK School of Art and Visual Studies at the UK College of Fine Arts is an accredited member of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in the fields of art studio, art history and visual studies and art education.
MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Hale, 859-257-8716; whitney.hale@uky.edu