FRANKFURT.- The exhibition “Social Facades” at MMK 1 of the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst presents the collections of the DekaBank and the MMK in dialogue with one another. The exhibition title “Social Facades” was adopted from a work by Isa Genzken in the DekaBank collection. It also stands for often idealized social and political constructs that are reflected in works of art. In a period of fundamental change, marked by overarching problems such as environmental pollution and the new challenges to existing social structures that have accompanied urbanization and a transition from outmoded cultural ideals, the exhibition interrogates how artists address these phenomena. The presented works reveal what takes place behind the facade of globalization’s notion of unchecked progress.

For example, in her film “Beijing” (2008), which was shot during the precisely staged Olympic Games, Sarah Morris shows the profound changes that Chinese society has undergone since the opening of the country to the West. She presents a subtle portrait of a neo-capitalistic state in a phase dominated by intense image cultivation and desire for control. In scenes that merge politics, society, and business, the film portrays an authoritarian and previously closed country in a period of change and apparent opening. The evocative soundtrack, which underscores the film’s compelling images, was created by Liam Gillick, who is represented with other works in the same exhibition space. Gillick created his large-format ceiling work “Applied Discussion Platform” (2003) specifically for the foyer of DekaBank’s conference floor on the forty-fourth story of the Trianon skyscraper in Frankfurt. It is now being shown for the first time outside the premises of the bank at MMK I. The work delineates a space within a space, which is designated by the artwork’s title as a sphere of discussion and exchange. The different colors of the work’s aluminum sheeting convey the sense of an ordered grid. Through the alternating dimensions the work’s squares and rectangles and the color contrasts that make up this abstract composition the artist represents a diversity of opinions. Individual fields of color are thus expressions of different social and cultural values. Shown with the ceiling installation from the DekaBank collection is the architectural model “Scale Model for a building in a public garden” (2009) from the MMK collection, which Gillick developed on the occasion of his contribution to the German pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2009. In the wake of longstanding discussions about reconstructing the German pavilion due to its Nazi era architecture, documenta founder Arnold Bode drew up plans for reconfiguring the structure in 1957, without having been commissioned to do so. As part of his contribution to the pavilion, Gillick implemented Bode’s deconstruction in a small architectural model, which functions as a kind of “what if” scenario. Through this design, the hierarchical form and monumental character of the building are dismantled.

The Danish-Norwegian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset investigate the functions and implications of architectural spaces of everyday life that we usually do not call into question. The installation “Das Meldeamt” (2003) is one of the four gifts that passes to the MMK from the DekaBank collection in conjunction with the exhibition. In the work, a public administrative office (the “Meldeamt” is where Germans are required to register their address) seems to have been robbed of its function: numbers have been ripped out of the dispensor; the plant is dried up; and the digital display simply reads “0.” Next to the chairs lie not the reading material typically found in waiting rooms but magazines on Black music and feminist and homosexual themes. The architectural backdrop becomes a social facade, projecting the utopia of a society that no longer requires the orderliness of this kind of registry.

Another work that is being donated to the MMK collection is Martin Kippenberger’s Assemblage “NO NATI” (1987). In the work, which plays with the words “nation” and “no Nazi,” the artist has combined various objects, such as a drum—which with Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum came to stand for a confrontation with Nazism—a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and a sticker of the anti-nuclear movement. The work brings to the fore the social conflict inherent to Germany’s process of coming to terms with its past. The painting “The Modern House of Believing or Not” (1985) from the MMK collection is also an expression of the criticism that Kippenberger directed at society and the art world. As in the case of Kippenberger’s works, visitors to the exhibition repeatedly encounter similarities and parallels between the two collections that offer new perspectives on the works of art.

On the occasion of its centennial anniversary, the DekaBank is donating four major works from its collection to the museum. The gift encompasses large-scale installations by the artists Elmgreen & Dragset, Michael Beutler, and Tue Greenfort as well as a sculpture by Martin Kippenberger. In conjunction with the generous donation from DekaBank, for the first time an exhibition is being mounted that examines the parallels between the two collections and juxtaposes individual works from each.

The MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst and the DekaBank have enjoyed a longstanding partnership. The DekaBank has helped expand the museum’s collection and was also a founding partner of MMK 2 in the TaunusTurm. In addition to its support of the MMK, the DekaBank has established its own collection of contemporary art, headed by curators Silke Schuster-Müller and Valery Trosdorf, over the past fifteen years. The DekaBank collection relates to that of the MMK on various levels, and numerous artists are represented in both collections by extensive bodies of work. Usually only on view to the employees of DekaBank in its offices, these works are now being presented in a public setting for the first time.

Exhibiting Artists: Andy Hope 1930, Michael Beutler, Martin Creed, Elmgreen & Dragset, Cerith Wyn Evans, Tue Greenfort, Isa Genzken, Liam Gillick, Martin Kippenberger, Sarah Morris, Michael Pfrommer, Jeroen de Rijke/Willem de Rooij, Wilhelm Sasnal, Markus Sixay, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jonas Weichsel, Franz West, Heimo Zobernig