Theme

FORBIDDEN BEAUTY – VERBOTENE SCHÖNHEIT

Why is the concept of beauty so frowned upon in contemporary art? Is it afraid of that beautiful appearance that conceals problems but cannot seriously address them? The catchword of the moment is an allegedly necessary “aesthetic correctness” of well-meant political concerns. However, the political can also be negotiated aesthetically, without uncritically falling for the alleged power of the images of film and cinema or replacing content with superficial retinal stimuli. Political art does not have to be formally mediocre or old-fashioned, critical things can also be packaged in aggressive beauty.

After the failure of the large-scale exhibitions of 2017 in Athens/Kassel and Venice, which were announced with much premature praise and left a stale taste in their often naïve political message (Documenta) or formal harmlessness (Venice Biennale), it is now a matter of nothing less than determining the status quo of contemporary art: how can it free itself from the dictate of commerciality that is lazy in terms of content without passing away in formal insignificance? KINO DER KUNST 20 wants to show how the art of the moving image can take up the urgent themes of our time in a highly aesthetic visual language.