3 August 2016

Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis 2016. Edmund Kuppel

Exhibition, 3 September – 3 October 2016

Invitation to the Press Preview:
Friday, 2 September 2016, 6 pm
Followed by the award ceremony and exhibition opening at 7 pm
Exhibition hall opens at 5:30 pm
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
Registration for the press event is requested: Tel. +49 (0)30 200 57-1514
or presse@adk.de

With:
Edmund Kuppel
Wulf Herzogenrath, art historian, director of the Visual Arts Section at the Akademie der Künste
Raimund Kummer, artist, member of the jury and of the Visual Arts Section at the Akademie der Künste
Peter Weibel, chairman, ZKM │ Center for Art and Media

This year’s Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis (2016) will be awarded to Edmund Kuppel. In honour of the occasion, the Akademie der Künste is showing a selection of his works at the Academy building on Hanseatenweg. Photographs, video installations, photo apparatuses and projectors can be viewed in the exhibition, including the installation Das Kabinett des Ferdinand von Blumenfeld (1977-2009). Kuppel’s film Les marches du héros absurde (2016) will make its public debut.
In his works, Kuppel has contributed pioneering achievements to the relationship between photography and sculpture. His extensive oeuvre encompasses the creative process, technical conditions and the role of perception in taking photographs. The jury for the Kollwitz-Preis – made up of the academy members Bogomir Ecker, Raimund Kummer and Hermann Pitz – emphasize that this is an outstanding body of work, reflecting the most diverse media, which has received too little attention in international discourse until now. They also stress it’s relevance and appeal to all generations.
An unusual artistic object is being published especially for the exhibition within the series of Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis publications: From an approximately 60-minute video work on ten train rides that end in the train station again and again, Edmund Kuppel has developed an eleventh journey in “book form.” He’s created a folded, accordion-style leaflet that is itself a kind of endless loop.
Following the press preview, the award ceremony (laudation: Peter Weibel) and exhibition opening will begin at 7 pm.

Edmund Kuppel was born in 1947 in Blumenfeld (Baden region of Germany), and now lives in Karlsruhe and Paris. He studied sculpture and art history in Karlsruhe. From 1987-88 he taught experimental photography at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig as a guest professor. In 1999 he directed a studio entitled “Itinéraires” at the École des Beaux-Arts in Angers, France. He also taught at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe in 2002. In 2011 the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe showed a large exhibition of his projections from 1970 to 2010, accompanied by an extensive catalogue, which was published by the Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König.
Edmund Kuppel is represented in numerous public collections: Kunsthalle Kiel; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Städtische Galerie, Karlsruhe; Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe; Bibliothèque nationale de France, département des estampes et de la photographie, Paris; ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe.

The Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis, awarded annually to a visual artist by the Akademie der Künste, is endowed with 12,000 euros. Previous prize-winners include Bernard Frize (2015), Corinne Wasmuht (2014), Eran Schaerf (2013), Douglas Gordon (2012) and Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller (2011).
The prize, as well as the accompanying exhibition and publication are co-financed by the Kreissparkasse Köln, which funds the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln (Cologne).

Exhibition
3 September – 3 October 2016, Tue – Sun, 11 am – 7 pm,
admission: 6/4 €
Free admission for visitors under 18, and on Tuesdays from 3 pm – 7 pm
Tours on Sundays, 11:30 am

Held as part of the EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography 2016 and the Berlin Art Week

Press kits and press photos are available online: http://www.adk.de/de/presse/pressematerial.htm