Beate Wassermann

At the Mod­er­na Museet in Malmö, chezweitz con­tin­ues its long-stand­ing and high­ly pro­duc­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion with cura­tor Iris Müller-West­er­mann. Müller-West­er­mann suc­ceed­ed in ele­vat­ing Hilma af Klint to the canon of art his­to­ry with her first major exhi­bi­tions. ​“Beate Wasser­mann – Bal­anc­ing Acts” presents the first com­pre­hen­sive ret­ro­spec­tive of the artist, who passed away in 2018, in Malmö. As with af Klint, chezweitz has devel­oped a mod­el exhi­bi­tion for­mat for this show, focus­ing atten­tion on the col­lect­ed works. Instead of tra­di­tion­al exhi­bi­tion walls, tri­an­gu­lar archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments placed through­out the space cre­ate a high­ly open, sceno­graph­ic sys­tem that show­cas­es the diverse forms and rela­tion­ships between the works. Despite its inter­nal log­ic, the struc­ture allows for a dif­fer­ent kind of move­ment than in con­ven­tion­al art exhi­bi­tions – less hier­ar­chi­cal, with vis­i­tors ​“danc­ing” around the art­works. The white walls, used as a medi­um of scenog­ra­phy, bring Wasser­man­n’s light paint­ing to the fore­front. Her art radi­ates into the phys­i­cal space.

Beate Wasser­mann stood for her con­fi­dent posi­tion in a his­tor­i­cal­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed world and con­tin­ues to inspire younger gen­er­a­tions today.