To mark the 10th anniversary of the WELTKUNSTZIMMER, we are showing the major exhibition “Reality is there anyway”. The theme of reality is examined from different artistic perspectives in installations, sculptures, videos and paintings.

In a distant future and a galaxy far, far away, where humanity has ended up alongside other species, art has not existed for an unthinkably long time. An alien, quoting Piet Mondrian, pontificates on the overcoming of art: “Then we will no longer need pictures and sculptures because we will live in realized art.” However, when a species begins to teleport earthly works of art from the past to a planet as gifts, the authorities are forced to evaluate and interpret these unknown objects. Dietmar Dath describes a revolution in his book Feldevayé. Roman der letzten Künste, Dietmar Dath describes a revolution triggered by the occupation with long-forgotten (art) objects, with things that their interpreters do not understand, but which in turn inspire them to creatively produce things that they do not understand. So what happens to us when we rediscover art?

Back to the present, the actuality, the reality, the now, whatever we want to call it, in realities with which people are confronted in a wonderful, brutal, tragic, fantastic, profane, mythical, whatever way. The definitions of reality move between uncertainty and radical construction. Neither neurobiology, which attributes our image of reality to the interpretation of the most diverse neuronal patterns and defines the human brain as the “creator” of our reality, nor physics, in which, according to Heisenberg, “objective reality” has long since “evaporated”, offer any liabilities. Within this uncertainty, the great quality of art is to productively process this state of doubt, discover potentials, invent new realities and develop counter-models.

Most of the works exhibited here were created within the last few years, during which the situation for artists and producers has changed, in some cases dramatically, and in which the significance and relevance of art production and cultural participation has been renegotiated. The exhibition title plays with a certain larmoyance - as a sentimental distance to what cannot be changed, as an escape from reality or what we think it is, as well as a critical potential with a view to society that demands a commitment to thinking about other, alternative ideas and possibilities.

For the exhibition, we have invited artists who each have a special, sometimes long-standing relationship with Düsseldorf, have studied here, have exhibited in various local institutions, still work here or have left the village on the Düssel for Brussels, Amsterdam, France, Berlin or elsewhere in the Rhineland. So we are all the more delighted to be able to welcome old friends and good acquaintances, artists whose work we have followed and greatly appreciate over the years, back to Düsseldorf for the 10th anniversary of the WELTKUNSTZIMMER.

Curated by Janine Blöß and Thomas W. Rieger, in collaboration with the WELTKUNSTZIMMER team.

THE BIG NOW, a festival with concerts, performances, DJ sets, screenings and workshops, opens at the same time. What does it mean to deal with the now and the moment? Neither retrospectively nor in the distant future, we want to immerse ourselves completely in the moment and in art.

Performers include Butoh dancer Yukio Suzuki, the Acoustic Summer Festival, the Chance Festival, HAUSCHKA, The Visitor and Sølyst. During the festival, the backyard of the WELTKUNSTZIMMER will be enlivened with a beer garden and changing evening events.

We look forward to celebrating art in its various genres, genres and realities together with you. Be part of it!