From Sunday 3 April, the Taeuber-Arp Museum, Rolandseck station, will be hosting the exhibition “Unwesen und Treiben”. On the occasion of the repositioning of the works of Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Hans Arp, the museum has made the cabinet available to the KISD as a project partner, which could be used by students.
The exhibition “De-Coding Sophie. NOW!” is a collaboration between the Arp Museum Rolandseck and students from the Köln International School of Design (KISD) under the direction of Prof. Iris Utikal and Dipl. Des. Tanja Godlewsky.
In winter semester 2021, the students looked into the question of how Taeuber-Arp’s work touches our contemporary world. As a result, “De-Coding Sophie. NOW!” has set itself the goal of placing the topicality of her work in a contemporary context. In this context, Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s balanced interdisciplinarity in particular represents a great fascination and source of inspiration to the students – not least in view of their own Integrated Design degree programme, which focuses on an interdisciplinary design education.
Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) is considered one of the most important modern artists. She was one of the earliest representatives of geometric abstraction and played a key role in the Dada movement. With dance as her guiding theme and an extraordinary multidisciplinarity, Taeuber-Arp created a highly innovative collection of works that encompassed the design of textiles and glass windows, furniture, interiors and buildings, painting and sculpture.
For Taeuber-Arp, abstraction was always linked to an everyday reality of life in which objects were to be used and manipulated, spaces moved and works of art viewed and experienced. Her fluid movement between genres, disciplines and creative roles made her an artist of particular relevance and one who defied the norms of her time.
In “De-Coding Sophie. NOW!”, Taeuber-Arp’s techniques and formal elements are analysed, “decoded” and re-interpreted with new technologies.The aim is to give viewers access to Taeuber-Arp’s relevance to innovation so that they can enter into dialogue with her art. The works by KISD students in “De-Coding Sophie. NOW!” deal with the basic principles of geometric abstraction, repetition and clarity of elements used by Taeuber-Arp and present them in different media and techniques. In the sense of Taeuber-Arp’s principle and desire, they refer “to the time and place in which they were created” and to
Duration of the KISD exhibition “De-Coding Sophie. NOW!”
April 3rd to May 14th, 2022
in the context of the exhibition “Unwesen und Treiben”