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Dr. Harald Falckenberg
Private collector, founder of Kulturstiftung Phoenix Art
Harald Falckenberg, born in 1943, is one of Germany's most important private collectors. His collection, gathered over a period of 12 years and containing around 1,600 works, covers the last forty years and includes seminal works by Vito Acconci, Günter Brus, Dieter Roth, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Richard Prince, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, Raimond Pettibon, Franz Ackermann, Jonathan Meese,
John Bock and others.

Falckenberg is President of the Kunstverein of Hamburg. He studied law at Freibourg, Berlin and Hamburg where he obtained his Doctorate Degree with a dissertation on ‘Comparative International Law‘. Since 1979, he works as General Manager of an oil company. He is also Honorary Judge at the Constitutional Court of Hamburg.

Kulturstiftung Phoenix Art – Phoenix Art Foundation
A Forum for Contemporary Art
Phoenix Art, open to the public since September 2001, was created by entrepreneur and art collector Harald Falckenberg and Phoenix AG, to put works of contemporary art from private collection on display for the public. It is not intended to be a static museum, but rather a forum for encounters, events and workshops.

The exhibition centre, housed in a vacant factory space in the centre of Hamburg-Harburg, has become an internationally recognized forum for contemporary art. From the building, approximately 6000 square meters are devoted to exhibits featuring international art collections and single shows of exemplary outsiders including Öyvind Fahlström, Arthur Köpcke, Hanne Darboven, Otto Mühl and Peter Weibel etc.

Works from the collections of F.C. Gundlach, Klaus Lafrenz and Ingvild Götz have been shown. The exhibitions are designed by independent curators, as for instance Zdenek Felix, former director of Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen.

Schaulager - ShowDepot
Another area is used to house the collection of Harald Falckenberg, the backbone of the foundation. The collection has been put together on the basis of a committed social debate and an interest in the role of art in modern society. The works are presented in two areas, one of them accessible to the visitors who may pull out the installed sliding walls with the art works.

The transformation of the historic Phoenix plants – which could no longer be used for industrial activities – provides an impressive demonstration of what can be done with such buildings, and reflects the company’s conviction that dealing with art will encourage creative thinking on the part of employees.

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EXHIBITIONS

PAUL THEK
May 31 - September 14, 2008

Publication
| Exhibitions in Karlsruhe & Hamburg
| 550 Pages
| Harald Falckenberg and Peter Weibel

Paul Thek is not only known as a legendary founder of installation art, but his precarious environments have had an influence on lifestyle. Later generations of artists who put subjectivity at the center of their works have followed Paul Thek not only in their excessivity with overflowing installations spanning space and material. Like him, they have pushed the question of the interpretability of art to its limits. Thek broke the mold of canonization and convention. Therefore, it is no wonder that Susan Sontag dedicated her book »Against Interpretation« to Paul Thek.

Paul Thek is the epitome of an »artist's artist,« whose influence extends through to the most recent generation of artists. Our selection concentrates-with many exceptions and with no claim to being complete-on the works of younger artists who have a close relationship to Thek’s diverse oeuvre. Beginning from his approaches, their works appear as independent positions in the contemporary art world. Against this backdrop. Thek's work is looked at from a current perspective.

Paul Thek occupied a place between high art and low art, between the epic and the everyday. During his brief life (1933-1988), he went against the grain of art world trends, humanizing the institutional spaces of art with the force of his humor, spirituality, and character. Twenty years after Thek's death from AIDS, we can now recognize his influence on contemporary artists ranging from Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman to Matthew Barney, Mike Kelley, and Paul McCarthy, as well as Kai Althoff, Jonathan Meese, and Thomas Hirschhorn.This book brings together more than 300 of Thek's works - many of which are published here for the first time - to offer the most comprehensive display of his work yet seen. The book, which accompanies an exhibition at ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art presenting Thek's work in dialogue with contemporary art by young artists, includes painting, sculpture, drawing, and installation work, as well as photographs documenting the room-size environments into which Thek incorporated elements from art, literature, theater, and religion.These works chart Thek's journey from legendary outsider to foundational figure in contemporary art.
In their antiheroic diversity, Thek's works embody the art revolution of the 1960s; indeed, Susan Sontag dedicated her classic Against Interpretation to him. Thek's treatment of the body in such works as "Technological Reliquaries," with their castings and replicas of human body parts, tissue, and bones, both evoke the aura of Christian relics and anticipate the work of Damien Hirst. The book, with more than 500 images (300 in color) and nineteen essays by art historians, curators, collectors, and artists, investigates Thek's work on its own terms and as a starting point for understanding the work of the many younger artists Thek has influenced.

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The works by Thek thereby also serve as a starting point for investigating the works of other artists represented in the exhibition. ( ZKM 2007)

Works by Paul Thek and Franz Ackermann, Kai Althoff / Robert Elfgen, Cosima von Bonin, Björn Dahlem, Sebastian Hammwöhner / Dani Jakob / Gabriel Vormstein, Rachel Harrison, Axel Heil / John Isaacs, Thomas Hirschhorn, Andreas Hofer, Mike Kelley, Jon Kessler, Suchan Kinoshita, Martin Kippenberger, Jonathan Meese, John Miller, William Pope.L, Gregor Schneider, Zeger Reyers / Lee Ranaldo, Bob & Roberta Smith and a special contribution by Peter Hujar and Edwin Klein.

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Permanent exhibition of the Falckenberg Collection of Art
The Show Depot
Works of
e.g.: Kelley, R. Prince, Baldessari, Kippenberger, Büttner ...
Please note!
The show depot includes works that may be disturbing to sensitive persons.

Visit of the exhibitions after notification only.
Telephone | Answering machine
0049 - (0)40-325067-62

E-MAIL-NOTIFICATION

Kulturstiftung Phoenix Art
Sammlung Falckenberg
Wilstorfer Str. 71
in 21073 Hamburg-Harburg

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