UniSysCat member Dr. Benjamin Steininger from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science curates the exhibition 'Oil. Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age' that will open on September 4, 2021 at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.
The exhibition is the first historically and geographically comprehensive retrospective of artistic positions dealing with crude oil, its derivates and the historic process fueled by oil. The visitors of the exhibition are invited to a retrospective on an era that we need to better understand in order to take an active part in the design of its end.
About 220 paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, photographs and artworks created especially for the exhibition as well as technical and scientific objects offer a glimpse into the complexities and paradoxes of the global Petrol Age. The largest pieces in the exhibiton will be 14 meters wide sculptures by Entang Wiharso from Indonesia and Tony Cragg from UK/Germany, the tiniest object will be the 3 mm small petroleumfly diasemocera petrolei from tar pits in California - one of the few species trained by evolution to live in crude oil so far.
Participating artist are:
Monira Al Qadiri, Ana Alenso, Francis Alÿs, Yuri Ancarani, Qiu Anxiong, Atelier van Lieshout, Kader Attia, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Klaus Auderer, Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck & Media Farzin, Lothar Baumgarten, Jennifer-Jane Bayliss, Wes Bell, Uwe Belz, Claus Bergen, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ursula Biemann, Vanessa Billy, Brett Bloom, Mark Boulos, Margaret Bourke-White, Bureau d’Etudes, Edward Burtynsky, Warren Cariou, Christo, Tony Cragg, Walter De Maria, Mark Dion, Gerardo Dottori, Sokari Douglas Camp, Rena Effendi, William Eggleston, Hans Fischerkoesen, Sylvie Fleury, John Gerrard, Christoph Girardet, Claus Goedicke, Tue Greenfort, Carl Grossberg, Monika Grzymala, Robert Gschwantner, Hans Haacke, Ernst Haeckel, Eberhard Havekost, Romuald Hazoumè, Armin Herrmann, John Heartfield, Michael Hirschbichler, Bernhard Hopfengärtner, Murad Ibragimbekov, Aaditi Joshi, Peter Keetman, Matt Kenyon, Tetsumi Kudo, Ernst Logar, Mark Lombardi, Ellen Karin Mæhlum, Rémy Markowitsch, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Paul Michaelis, Kay Michalak & Sven Völker, Richard Misrach, Michael Najjar, Hugo Niebeling, Franz Nolde, George Osodi, Alex Prager, Alain Resnais, Oliver Ressler, Martha Rosler, Miguel Rothschild, Ed Ruscha, Shirin Sabahi, Santiago Sierra, Taryn Simon, Andreas Slominski, Robert Smithson, Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, Thomas Struth, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gunhild Vatn, Wolf Vostell, Entang Wiharso, Erwin Wurm, Yutsi