Jurgen Klauke
Through his demonstrative staging of roles, Jürgen Klauke states an act of artistic liberty, a form of protest against the consolidated and unscruitinized order of the German years of economic constitution during the 1960s and 1970s. Connected to the failure of the social revolution carried by the generation of 1968 the viewpoint of the artist turns not to social movements and groups but towards the constitution of the individual, to his sometimes isolated and even lost existence, but also to his possibilities of self-creation. Beside their critical attitude towards society, Klauke’s early work contains a positively liberating and subliminal aggressive hedonism, that links to the serial travesties of Andy Warhol, of Camp, the Bohemian current of the 70ies and style-forming figures of pop culture like Lou Reed, David Bowie and Iggy Pop.
By subtle interventions and seemingly austere but sophisticated configurations and permutations Klauke’s oeuvre anticipates the gender and identity discussions that basically spread in the 90s. These works fascinate by a high tension between a modest, quasi-documentary approach of the photographic settings and a likewise controversial, complex and psychologically loaded content of an existential instance.
From the early 70s on Jürgen Klauke has participated in numerous exhibitions including Kunstmuseum …
Through his demonstrative staging of roles, Jürgen Klauke states an act of artistic liberty, a form of protest against the consolidated and unscruitinized order of the German years of economic constitution during the 1960s and 1970s. Connected to the failure of the social revolution carried by the generation of 1968 the viewpoint of the artist turns not to social movements and groups but towards the constitution of the individual, to his sometimes isolated and even lost existence, but also to his possibilities of self-creation. Beside their critical attitude towards society, Klauke’s early work contains a positively liberating and subliminal aggressive hedonism, that links to the serial travesties of Andy Warhol, of Camp, the Bohemian current of the 70ies and style-forming figures of pop culture like Lou Reed, David Bowie and Iggy Pop.
By subtle interventions and seemingly austere but sophisticated configurations and permutations Klauke’s oeuvre anticipates the gender and identity discussions that basically spread in the 90s. These works fascinate by a high tension between a modest, quasi-documentary approach of the photographic settings and a likewise controversial, complex and psychologically loaded content of an existential instance.
From the early 70s on Jürgen Klauke has participated in numerous exhibitions including Kunstmuseum und Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Museum Moderner Kunst, Passau, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris. His work has also been shown at Documenta 6, Kassel, (1977), Documenta 8, Kassel, (1987) and the 1980 Venice Biennale.
Courtesy of Galerie Guido W. Baudach
