Last Night’s Fortune Teller

About

The newly acquired artworks have been presented to the public in Berlin and Stuttgart. During the course of the exhibitions it has become clear that the works by the Chinese artists relate to a number of key themes in the Daimler Art Collection, including trends in abstract and conceptual art and new media forms. However, at the same time, these artworks represent an entirely new and distinctive mix within the organic structure of the collection in both cultural and aesthetic terms. The Daimler Art Collection’s acquisition policy has focused on artists from centres such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong province, and Hong Kong. The collection’s forward-looking acquisition strategy, accompanied by in-depth local research, has enabled it to purchase key works by well-known international artists but also pieces by members of the younger generation of artists (born around 1980) who are not yet widely known in Germany. Overall the works provide insight into a nation which is the subject of enthralling and controversial debates and which will play a critical role on the global stage in the 21st century, not only because of its classical traditions but also because of its rapid economic and cultural growth.

Like its predecessors, the current exhibition ‘Last Night’s Fortune Teller’ presents different aspects of German, Chinese, and international art. The exhibition has deliberately distanced itself from an interpretation of the works based only on the country or cultural group from which they originate, with the aim of focusing visitors’ attention on the questions inherent in the pieces. The first part of the exhibition series ‘From a Poem to the Sunset’ (Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, 2015) focused primarily on installations and video artworks and presented the conceptual approaches of contemporary Chinese art. In the second part ‘On Curbstone Jewels and Cobblestones’ (Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, 2015/16), the overall theme was photographic and sculptural works. ‘Last Night’s Fortune Teller’ returns to the dialogues and contrasts between the pieces on show. The focus in this latest exhibition is on sculptures and installations, together with works at the intersections between painting, photography, and video art. There is no overall thematic grouping.

THEMATIC TOURS

Every third Saturday there will be a German-speaking (16 h) and English-speaking (17 h) guided tour. The tour lasts one hour and looks at selected aspects of the current exhibition. The tours are free and registration is not necessary.

Saturday, December, 16, 2017                                guided tour
5 p.m. The Historical Space of Imagination
Guillaume Bijl Haris Epaminonda, Iman Issa

Every day finds are collected and removed from their usual use value through artistic and aesthetic processes in many of the works in the exhibition. The works, which are thematized in the tour, range from tragicomic ‘Composition Trouvées’ (Bijl), installation memory spaces (Epaminonda) and sculptural objects of remembrance (Issa). All works allow a kaleidoscopic view that replaces given contents with a variety of meanings.

Saturday, January, 6, 2018                                    guided tour
5 p.m. In the Transition Zone of the Medium
Ulrich Erben, José Heerkens, Monika Brandmeier, Michael Sayles

For the artists Ulrich Erben, José Heerkens, Monika Brandmeier, and Michael Sayles, the material is thematic foreground. The handling of color, light and material is rethought through the combination of different media such as drawing, painting and sculpture. The works question the relationship between readable form and materiality, abstraction, and content. This tour is dedicated to this field of tension.

Saturday, January, 27, 2018                                    guided tour
5 p.m. The Promise of Tomorrow
Sylvie Fleury, Simone Westerwinter, Yu Honglei, Patrick Fabian Panetta

Through artistic appropriation, artists refer to works and objects from spheres of culture which are defined and categorized by public and personal inscriptions. Sylvie Fleury and Simone Westerwinter question the socially attributed gender roles through references to art history and consumption; in Yu Honglei's installations, individual and cultural contexts are presented and negated at the same time by focusing on the fragility of personal memories; With his conceptual work Proxy Affairs, Patrick Panetta leads the forms of a collection’s presentation to the brink of absurdity.  

Saturday, February, 17, 2018                                    guided tour
5 p.m. Translations – Transcription – Transfiguration
Guillaume Bijl, Yang Fudong, Bethan Huws, Iman Issa

Many artists cite and allude to moments from art and film history by referring to existing works or traditional forms in order to transform and interpret cultural standards. The tour focuses on this artistic practice and tries to trace a diversity of artistic references in relation to selected models and examples.

Saturday, March, 10, 2018                                    guided tour
5 p.m. The Historical Space of Imagination
Guillaume Bijl Haris Epaminonda, Iman Issa

Some of the works in our exhibition incorporate every day finds and separate them from their usual use value through the artistic-aesthetic processes. The works, which are thematized in the exhibition, range from tragicomic “Composition Trouvées” (Bijl), installative memory spaces (Epaminonda), and sculptural objects of remembrance (Issa). These works offer a kaleidoscopic view, which allow for a variety of meanings instead of solid structures.

Saturday, March, 31, 2018                                    guided tour
5 p.m. In the Transition Zone of the Medium
Ulrich Erben, José Heerkens, Monika Brandmeier, Michael Sayles

For the artists Ulrich Erben, José Heerkens, Monika Brandmeier, and Michael Sayles, the material is thematic foreground. The handling of color, light and material is rethought through the combination of different media such as drawing, painting and sculpture. The works question the relationship between readable form and materiality, abstraction, and content. This tour is dedicated to this field of tension.

Saturday, April, 21, 2018                                    guided tour
5 p.m. Narrative Fragments
Haris Epaminonda, Iman Issa, Dayanita Singh, Yu Hongleihe

The installative sculpture ensemble by Yu Honglei gives form to the “volatilization of the object into the infinite subjective” and opens up its own narrative spaces to the observers. Haris Epaminonda arranges loose images out of photographs, pictures, books, films or sculptures, which make the act of remembering itself the actual object and content of their artistic thinking. The tour focuses on different fragments of stories to open undefined narratives and expose poetic cartographies.

Saturday, May, 12, 2018                                    guided tour
5 p.m. Staging and Constructing Images of Femininity Images
Fang Lu, Sylvie Fleury, Simone Westerwinter, Yang Fudong

Some of the works in our exhibition address questions of identity and gender, voyeuristic fetishization, and the performance of the female body. The guided tour starts with the image of women in Yang Fudong's large-format color photographs and the thematically associated sculptures of Simone Westerwinter and Sylvie Fleury, and then dedicates itself to self-reflexive femininity in the 7-channel video installation by Chinese artist Fang Lu. The topics of the tour are social gender assignments, idealized images of women, and feminine constructions through the media.