FLUXUS 50

OPENING: 10 MAY 2012, 4 TO 8 PM Inge Baecker, Eric Andersen and the director of Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Gregor Jansen will be present at the opening of the exhibition. A meeting will be organized with the participation of Inge Baecker, Eric Andersen, Gregor Jansen and art critic-curator Fırat Arapoğlu on 12th of May.

DISCUSSION: WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF INGE BAECKER, ERIC ANDERSEN, GREGOR JANSEN, FIRAT ARAPOĞLU, BERAL MADRA (MODERATOR); 12 MAY 2012, 1 PM, KUAD GALLERY.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Fluxus, Kuad Gallery is organizing an exhibition with the collection of Galerie Inge Baecker (Münstereifel, Germany), which was one of the pioneer galleries that supported and promoted Fluxus since early 70's. From sculptural objects, assemblages, prints, multiples, photographs, more than 70 works will be assembled at Kuad Gallery to be exhibited and marketed. 50th anniversary of Fluxus is being celebrated in Wiesbaden and New York throughout 2012.

An International Festival of the Newest Music has been staged at the Städtisches Museum in Wiesbaden in 1962. A group of young artists and musician all co-founder of Fluxus which was a collective without a leader. They made an unusual performance and they have destroyed a Steinway grand piano with axes, hammers, saws and screwdrivers. This was a scandalous performance and it created an outrage as well as enthusiasm in the public and the press. This festival, called Fluxus was the beginning of an international artistic network researching inter-media and trying all kinds of Isms, which continues to influence the aesthetics, content and concepts of contemporary art.

The word Fluxus comes from the Latin word 'to flow' and was used as an art-term first time in Wiesbaden. Fluxus is an international network, a meeting ground and workplace for visual and audio artists, musicians, performers, composers, designers, and architects, as well as economists, mathematicians. Through radical and experimental music, performance, poetry, visual art, film, printed matter, and found objects, Fluxus focuses on the unpredictable, ordinary, and ephemeral moments of everyday life which are the main aspects of today's visual art.

Fluxus, based mainly in West Germany (Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Benjamin Patterson) and USA (La Monte Young, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, George Brecht, Robert Watts) found its way to a vast geography including Japan (Ay-O, Yoko Ono, Takehsa Kosugi, Shigeko Kubota, Mieko Shiumi), France (Ben Vautier, Robert Filliou, Daniel Spoerri, Emmet Williams), Denmark (Arthur Kőpcke, Eric Andersen), Czechoslavakia (Milan Knizak).

In this show Kuad Gallery is presenting the works of Eric Andersen, Detlef Birgfeld, Ugo Dossi, Louis Goodman, Al Hansen, Geoff Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik, Ulrike Rosenbach, Endre Tot, Wol Vostell, Emmett Williams as well as Otto Künzli, Serhat Kiraz and Ahmet Öktem's works. Zeljka Micanovic, a young artist from Serbia living and working in Istanbul will present a Fluxus book.

After the inaugural exhibition 'Permanent Avant-garde' showing a part of Marinko Sudac Collection from Zagreb, this exhibition is the second initiative of Kuad Gallery to inspire the public and the collectors for preservation of visual art memory and for acquisition of a comprehensive collection of art works.

Fluxus has been introduced to Turkey in 1991 with an extensive IFA exhibition during the 4th Istanbul Biennale (Atatürk Culture Center), in 1996 by a video-text-slide-sound exhibition of Sükran Aziz and Eric Andersen (Atatürk Culture Center) and in 1999 with a section of collection of Galerie Inge Baecker (Borusan Art Gallery). For the first time in Turkey, original Fluxus works and editions are being presented for sale in Kuad Gallery.

WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK TO CONSULATE GENERAL OF THE FEDERAL GERMAN REPUBLIC IN ISTANBUL, THE CONSULATE GENERAL OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC IN ISTANBUL, GOETHE INSTITUT, THE FOUNDATION FOR FUTURE CULTURE AND ART, THE POINT HOTEL, AND MAS MATBAA FOR THEIR GENEROUS SUPPORT.

FLUXUS 50
EXHIBITION ON THE OCCASION OF 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF FLUXUS
Fluxus Works - Sammlung Inge Baecker

Künstler: Detlef Birgfeld, Ugo Dossi, Louis Goodman, Al Hansen, Geoffrey Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Ulrike Rosenbach, Endre Tót, Wolf Vostell, Emmett Williams, Nam June Paik, Eric Andersen, Serhat Kiraz, Ahmet Öktem, Otto Künzli, Zeljka Micanovic.