Personal Patterns

As one of the most important artists of her generation the American Andrea Zittel has redefined sculpture as part of everyday life. The first solo exhibition in Germany since twenty years, that was conceived and developed in close collaboration with the artist, takes over Haus Esters. Zittel’s transdisciplinary practice, manifested in her visual as well as personal patterns, meets Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s built utopia of a new life, erected in 1927.

Since the 1990s, Zittel has been exploring the space around her in “test sites for investigative living”—first in the density of New York and later in the vastness of the Californian desert. For an entire season, for example, she wore her own Uniform every day; later, she built her compound and studio complex A-Z West. Her experimental works are based on her interest in human needs, especially as they take shape in designs. Influenced by the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, Zittel develops simple, futuristic furniture, fashion, and architecture, often acting as a one-woman enterprise. Art and life, as well as artist, private person, and entrepreneur merge in her work. Zittel has furnished Haus Esters with international loans and works tailored specifically to the spaces. Her works oscillate between function and abstraction, sounding out private versus social spaces. By that they open new perspectives onto ways of life and values that seem self-evident—but are not necessarily so. The exhibition will be documented with a catalogue in German and English.
Curator: Juliane Duft

Personal Patterns is part of the HLHE Dialogue exhibition series, in which the oeuvres of Sonia Delaunay and Andrea Zittel are being shown alongside each other in the fall of 2022 under the guiding theme of Living Abstraction. With these two pioneering positions that transcend the boundaries between art and everyday life, the avant-garde of the early twentieth century meets the present.

Opening of the exhibition: October 23, 2022, 11.30 am
Speakers
Dr. Gabriele König (Cultural officer of the city of Krefeld)
Jasmina Merz (Kunststiftung NRW)
Jan Kleinewefers (Entrepreneur, private donor)
Katia Baudin (Director Kunstmuseen Krefeld)
Dr. des. Waleria Dorogova (co-curator Maison Sonia)
Juliane Duft (curator Andrea Zittel)

Funders