FRANKFURT-RHIEN-MAIN.- Frankfurt-Rhein-Main is home to many artists, and as a region with a wealth of museums, exhibition spaces, and art sponsors, not to mention the renowned Staedelschule, it is a place of importance in the international art scene. “New Frankfurt Internationals”—a project comprising an exhibition, a performance series, and artistic interventions in the Rhein-Main edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung—seeks to recognize the artistic potential of the region and focuses on works by artists who live in Frankfurt and surrounding areas or who studied at the Staedelschule, the Academy of Fine Arts of Mainz, or the Offenbach Academy of Art and Design, and who, in some cases, are among the “new internationals” of the global art scene.

“New Frankfurt Internationals” is a cooperation between the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, and the Academy of Fine Arts Staedelschule Frankfurt am Main. The project has been conceived as a repeating exhibition and a nationally and internationally prominent platform for emerging artists from Frankfurt and the region.

With the title “Stories and Stages”, the first “New Frankfurt Internationals” exhibition focuses on works addressing various techniques and forms of narrative. Real and fictional stories emerge through everyday experience and television, in novels and conversation. Telling stories is a means of drawing relationships, communicating knowledge, creating worldviews, or producing order and structure. The knowledge that narratives are inherently subjective comes with the awareness that telling stories, as a cultural practice, is a fundamental human need.

When contemporary artists take on the theme of narrative, they often use a number of deconstructive devices to contradict the inherent structures or certainties a story creates. Not only do they break down established patterns but they also create their own visual forms of narrative. Almost all the works included in the exhibition refer to a concrete story or event. A central concern in such works is examining how stories are told and how implemented media and technologies can influence the course and interpretation of a story. Many artists use the media of film, photography, or sculpture as stages upon which their narratives play out.

In addition to the works exhibited at the Frankfurter Kunstverein and the MMK Zollamt, the Rhein-Main-Zeitung, the regional edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, will serve as a third “venue.” Each week of exhibition, an artist will design one page of the newspaper. In making these interventions the artists explore what a newspaper is or can be and thus examine forms of documentary and the relationship between text and image.

Performances also evoke a specific form of narration. A number of Staedelschule graduates are some of today’s most important performance artists. “New Frankfurt Internationals: Stories and Stages” will therefore likewise include numerous time-based works taking the form of performances and productions. These performances will take place in different venues throughout downtown Frankfurt.

New Frankfurt Internationals Stories and Stages
December 11, 201o – February 13, 2011 at Frankfurter Kunstverein and MMK Zollamt