11/08/2024, 3:00 pm,

Guided tour through the exhibition Ludger Gerdes: Synkategoremata and bike tour to Schiff für Münster by Ludger Gerdes with Lisa Petersohn

, Stadthausgalerie Münster

In 1987, Ludger Gerdes realized his first large site-specific work for public space with Schiff für Münster as part of the Skulptur Projekte. The artworks consists of an island in the shape of a ship, constructed from bricks, surrounded by a moat and covered with grass. An architectural construction made up of wooden columns is located to its stern, which is shaded by two poplar trees in the middle of the island. The installation is situated outside of the Münster city centre, on the border to the surrounding rural area. The ship is reminiscent of the barges on the Dortmund-Ems Canal. Gerdes uses narrative imagery to place his art in a tangible context with the world.

Ludger Gerdes would have turned 70 in 2024 and the Kunsthalle would like to take this as an opportunity to focus on his work and contextualize it with an exhibition at the Stadthausgalerie. Gerdes was a versatile practitioner: painter, sculptor and photographer, but also writer and theorist. He turned to these media episodically to develop his enduring aesthetic and philosophical investigation into the possibilities of artistic autonomy in public space. By bringing together sculptures and paintings that Gerdes created in the 1980s with one of the artist's most ambitious works from the 1990s, the photographic series Public Space – Private View, a further insight into the artist's work is provided. His photographic study of urban and rural environments, which considers the role of art beyond the institutions and target groups that normally structure it, seems particularly important in the context of the Public Collection, not least for the contextualization of his Schiff für Münster.

In the guided tour, Lisa Petersohn will give insights into Gerdes’ artistic positions and, after an exhibition visit, invite visitors on a bike tour to see Schiff für Münster by Ludger Gerdes.

Please bring your own bike.