Programmes

Bauhaus Residency

Gabi Schillig in the House Gropius, 2017, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

Contemporary Artists in the Masters’ Houses

In the 1920s, the artists of the international avant-garde lived next door to one another in the complex of Masters’ Houses. In 2016, contemporary artists returned to the scene. The Bauhaus Residency enables artists from all over the world to live and work in the Masters’ Houses.

Gropius House || Fictional

Artworks and artistic processes create specific new ways of seeing the world; in this sense, they are fictional. The meaning of fiction is revealing in this regard: originally derived from the Latin verb ‘fingere,’ it means nothing other than ‘to shape, form, invent.’ Artists’ work often explores how meaning and value are constituted in a specific present. Focusing on this investigation, Gropius House || Fictional presents collective forms of art making.

The Bauhaus Residency comprises three different possibilities for participation: an Open Call, which is addressed to artists who are part of an artist collective and which is hosted by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation together with the GfZk – Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig; a group of invited artists and authors; and a Shared Residency for young musicians with the Kurt Weill Fest GmbH. Each of these three formats has its own publicly accessible space at the Bauhaus: The musicians of the Shared Residency present their work at the Moholy-Nagy House, the artists of the Open Call exhibit on the upper floor of the Gropius House and the invited artists and authors get to design the ground floor of the Gropius House.

Bauhaus Centenary Residency 2019

Gropius House || Contemporary 2016 – 2018

Each multi-week Bauhaus Residency also focuses on an artistic-investigative approach to the annual theme of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (2016 Movement, 2017 Substance, 2018 Standard). Each Bauhaus Residency ends with a work presentation and every artist leaves one work behind in the Gropius House. The exhibition Gropius House || Contemporary in Gropius House is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm.


Bauhaus Residency 2018 – Standard

The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation’s annual theme for 2018, Standard, will focus on the conversation about types, norms and comparability. How do standards determine artistic production and perception? What about the presumed duality of the clarity of architecture and design on the one hand, and the ambiguity and provocative nature of art on the other? What opportunities and options, but also restrictions, does standardisation present for art production today? The Bauhaus Residency artists will pursue these questions during their time in the Masters’ Houses.

As part of the Shared Residency with Florida International University, Markus Hoffmann, Bauhaus Residency Artist 2017, will be in Miami as a guest from September to December 2018.


Bauhaus Residency 2017 – Substance

“First we seek contact with material…” stated Josef Albers, looking back at his pedagogical work at the Bauhaus. In his preliminary course, students worked freely with all kinds of materials in order to develop a new approach to form and design. He had students actively refine their senses through tactile experiments in order to discover the world anew.

In 2017 the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation focuses on the dialogue between material and design in its approach to the theme Substance: It addresses the substance of ideas, substance as matter and material, substantial forms, the conservation of substance and the substance of the Bauhaus as an institution. Each Bauhaus Residency takes an artistic-investigative approach to substance in the current digital age.


Bauhaus Residency 2016 – Movement

At the Bauhaus everything and everyone was in motion – always motivated, after the devastation of war, by the aim of shaping a modern social and economic age that would deny the possibility of a similar tragedy. Whether through László Moholy-Nagy, who devised the artistic technique of “vision in motion” or through Oskar Schlemmer, who set the stage itself in motion in order to define the mechanised processes of the industrial age – the phenomena of speed and acceleration had thoroughly positive connotations and were brought to life at the Bauhaus, too, in many and varied ways.

What is the significance of movement in 2016? Does the word still stand for change, departure and progress, or has it lost its aura, has its meaning now changed? In the Bauhaus Residency programme, artists have addressed the current and future relevance of this essentially modern idea.

Exhibition

Head of Project
Dr. Florian Strob
strob@bauhaus-dessau.de
T + 49 340 6508 467