{"id":44740,"date":"2024-07-26T08:39:09","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T06:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/?post_type=tribe_events&p=44740"},"modified":"2025-02-04T13:01:40","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T12:01:40","slug":"rune-mields-der-unendliche-raum-dehnt-sich-aus","status":"publish","type":"tribe_events","link":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/event\/rune-mields-der-unendliche-raum-dehnt-sich-aus\/","title":{"rendered":"Rune Mields. Der unendliche Raum \u2013 dehnt sich aus"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Rune Mields<\/strong>
Der unendliche Raum<\/strong>
\u2013 dehnt sich aus<\/strong><\/p>

Opening: Sunday, October 27, 2024, 12 pm<\/strong><\/p>

With Der unendliche Raum \u2013 dehnt sich aus<\/em> (The Infinite Space\u2014Expands), Ludwig Forum is presenting the work of the Cologne-based artist Rune Mields (b. 1935 in M\u00fcnster), who lived in Aachen from 1965 to 1970. Not only was she a central figure in the legendary Kunstverein Gegenverkehr: Zentrum f\u00fcr aktuelle Kunst e. V., but during that time she also produced in her Aachen studio a group of works called the \u201cR\u00f6hrenbilder\u201d (Pipe Paintings): large-format paintings based on drawings of cylinders, cones, and planes rendered fully sculpturally, on which she worked for several years from 1968 onward, and of which Peter and Irene Ludwig purchased Nr. 26<\/em> (1969) for their collection in 1970. In interplay with a selection of her paintings of prime numbers and tangents from the following years, the exhibition presents an artist who began in Aachen to create \u201cinfinite spaces\u201d by operating with systems, theories, and phenomena from mathematics, geometry, physics, philosophy, and other sciences. Mields\u2019s creative work has been guided ever since by her interest in lending a physical presence to systems and structures of both mathematical and political nature. She studies and illustrates these often-hidden concepts of order and translates them into the form of painting.<\/p>

Her \u201cR\u00f6hrenbilder\u201d not only represent the point of departure and center of the exhibition but also manifest the beginning of a grappling with describing space by means of painting that would continue for many years. In the first step, the artist creates precisely worked-out preliminary drawings to try out new combinations of and variations on her basic theme before translating the motifs into large-format paintings. Inspired by industrial photographs of rocket stages, oil tanks, control devices, and other technical equipment and machines illustrated in newspapers, geometric forms on planar surfaces determine the canvas in question. Painted in the perfect illusionistic manner, isolated pipes or cones protrude from the monochrome backgrounds, splitting them up, looming out of them, aiming directly at the viewers in order to integrate them into the action of the space surrounding them.<\/p>

Rune Mields is interested in the pipe as a symbol of energy, technology, aggression, and rationalist, as a geometric form as well as an instrument for describing space. Over the course of her experiments, she increasingly found the fetish character of the objects depicted to be distracting and in the \u201cTangenten\u201d (Tangents) series reduced the elements creating form and space to simple lines. As the art historian Annelie Pohlen has written in 1979, by increasingly abstracting the objects from the illusion of plastic, spatial reality, the \u201cTangenten\u201d resulted from the \u201cR\u00f6hrenbilder\u201d: \u201cThe technoid symbol directly and aggressively aimed at the viewer yields to the iridescent language of abstract systems. But just as the pipes point equally to ruling over the cosmos and being ruled by the cosmos, the dialectic of order and chaos also lies hidden in all of the systems that people have derived from experienceable reality.\u201d<\/p>

In 1976, Rune Mields directed her focus on numeral systems and began to work intensely with Chinese-Japanese sanju<\/em> prime numbers in particular. She wrote in ink on scrolls using stroke or bamboo numerals all the sanju<\/em> prime numbers from 0 to 120,000 which grow denser on the paper as their numerical value increases. In the children\u2019s book 10 Finger und die Zahlen 1 bis 10<\/em> (10 Fingers and the Numbers 1 to 10), presented in the exhibition along with the prime numbers, Mields superimposes numeral systems on the figures of a splayed hand, alluding to her interest in the numeral systems of various cultural spheres and to a human desire to establish ordering systems that can be observed globally. \u201cEverything has forms because they are inherent in numbers; take the latter from them, and they are nothing,\u201d writes the artist in one of her works, citing the Late Antique doctor of the church Augustine. Mields\u2019s works are borne by the ambivalences of humanity: the search for scientific ordering structures and the simultaneous desire for spirituality and irrationality; the closeness or reason and magic. They also illustrate orders in order to subsequently question and destabilize them.<\/p>

Supplemented by ninety-two drawings that could recently be acquired with support from the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation, additional study drawings, ephemera, and a gallery presentation on \u201cGegenverkehr e. V.\u201d, the exhibition at Ludwig Forum on the occasion of her imminent ninetieth birthday offers extensive insights into her fields of study and interest. In the process, it makes it possible to follow one by one the individual steps in the research process of this remarkable pioneer of painting in the information age. Its title, Der unendliche Raum \u2013 dehnt sich aus<\/em>, goes back to a conversation between the artist and her brother had about space and Albert Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity. In response to the question whether the statement is scientifically correct, she responded, \u201cIf you want to express it poetically, that\u2019s not a problem.\u201d Rune Mields then had a white sign with that text made and installed it on a pedestrian in Monschau in 1971 as part of the exhibition Umwelt-Akzente. Die Expansion der Kunst<\/em> (The Expansion of Art) (1970). The sentence has been the conceptual breeding ground for her work ever since.<\/p>

Curated by Eva Birkenstock with assistance from Anna Marckwald and Mailin Haberland. Accompanied by a gallery exhibition on the Kunstverein Gegenverkehr: Zentrum f\u00fcr aktuelle Kunst e. V., of which Rune Mields was a cofounder.<\/p>

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Kunstverein Gegenverkehr \u2013 Zentrum f\u00fcr aktuelle <\/strong>
Kunst e.V.<\/strong><\/p>

With an exhibition by Peter Br\u00fcning, the Kunstverein Gegenverkehr \u2013 Zentrum f\u00fcr aktuelle Kunst e. V. opened festively, on October 3, 1968, in the Theaterstra\u00dfe 50 in Aachen. According to its articles of association, the Kunstverein strove to \u201csupport the art world of the city of Aachen by presenting and discussing current trends in all areas of the arts.\u201d In contrast to the separation of art fields that was common then, \u201cGegenverkehr\u201d had a multidisciplinary approach that offered a platform for the visual arts, contemporary literature, music, theater, and film. Its founding members included Klaus Honnef, editor in chief of the arts section of the Aachener Nachrichten, the gallerist Will Kranenpohl, the artists Rune Mields and Benno Wert, and the writer Helmut Walbert. Rune Mields was an important initiator of ideas for the artistic direction of the Kunstverein. She also exhibited a series of her \u201cR\u00f6hrenbilder\u201d in the group show Bildnerische Raumsituationen (Visual Spatial Situations) at \u201cGegenverkehr\u201d in 1970.<\/p>

The Kunstverein had more than 500 members for a time and received visitors from Aachen, D\u00fcsseldorf, and Cologne as well as from Belgium and the Netherlands. By the time it closed in 1972, \u201cGegenverkehr\u201d had presented a total of thirty exhibitions by internationally known artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Daniel Buren, Michael Buthe, Jan Dibbets, Gilbert & George,G\u00fcnther Uecker, and Gerhard Richter. The last named had his first solo exhibition outside the art market. Klaus Honnef, who had primary responsibility for the artistic program, also initiated exhibitions by such artists from the United States as Allan D\u2019Arcangelo, Mel Ramos, Robert Stanley, and Lawrence Weiner. The Kunstverein was one of the first institutions in Europe to dedicate itself to the Conceptual art that was emerging in the 1960s. Its visionary exhibition and event program made \u201cGegenverkehr\u201d famous well beyond national borders.<\/p>

The joint activities of Mields and Honnef at \u201cGegenverkehr\u201d also resulted in them collaborating on the group exhibition Umwelt-Akzente<\/em> (1970) in Monschau, which they curated with the journalist Kaspar Vallot. This pioneering exhibition on art in public spaces included works by Keith Arnatt, Daniel Buren, Jan Dibbets, Renate Weh, and Lawrence Weiner, among others. Rune Mields herself presented her sign Der unendliche Raum \u2013 dehnt sich aus<\/em> (The Infinite Space\u2014Expands) for the first time in the urban space of Monschau.<\/p>

Irene and Peter Ludwig were among the regular visitors of \u201cGegenverkehr\u201d and supported it by advertising their chocolate in the exhibition catalogs and regularly purchasing works of art. In addition to Rune Mields\u2019s \u201cR\u00f6hrenbild\u201d Nr. 26<\/em> (1969), Blue Coat<\/em> (1966) by Mel Ramos and Hockey on Plexiglass<\/em> (1968) by Robert Stanley, which the Ludwigs acquired at \u201cGegenverkehr,\u201d can be found at the Ludwig Forum. Furthermore, numerous exhibition catalogs, photographs, historical films, and other materials from the Ludwig Forum archive tell the story of \u201cGegenverkehr\u201d, supplementing the solo exhibition of Rune Mields.<\/p>

Curated by Holger Otten, Anna Marckwald, and Miriam Schmidt.<\/p>

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Photo: Sepp Linckens, \u00a9Hanne Linckens<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Exhibition booklet (PDF)<\/span><\/a><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Gib hier deine \u00dcberschrift ein<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Rune Mields Der unendliche Raum \u2013 dehnt sich aus Opening: Sunday, October 27, 2024, 12 pm With Der unendliche Raum \u2013 dehnt sich aus (The Infinite Space\u2014Expands), Ludwig Forum is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":45508,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"tribe_events_cat":[14],"class_list":["post-44740","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tribe_events_cat-exhibition","cat_exhibition"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/44740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tribe_events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/44740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47156,"href":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/44740\/revisions\/47156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44740"},{"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ludwigforum.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events_cat?post=44740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}