DUSSELDORF.- The title SPOT ON refers to a museum kunst palast exhibition series for which several project rooms are set up anew at six-month intervals. In line with the museum’s liveliness and openness the SPOT ON programme goes beyond being restricted to most recent art or individual genres, with the rooms accommodating presentations of selected work groups from the museum’s own collection.

The project rooms also introduce and facilitate discussion of important new acquisitions, as well as featuring smaller exhibitions of artists who live in Düsseldorf or have a particular connection with the city.

Monika Bartholomé. Netsuke and other stories.
Monika Bartholomé engages with Japanese Nesuke figures by means of drawings and film clips. Starting point of this project was the artist’s fascination with the Nesuke collection held by museum kunst palast. These miniature carvings from the 18th and 19th century, which were used on kimono belts to fix sacks or small bags (sagemono), are characterised by a wealth and diversity of motifs. Using economical pencil lines, Monika Bartholomé builds upon the three-dimensional object and develops an ambiguous-intuitive process, which calls into being an intense network of relations between the drawn figures, the actual Netsuke and the viewer.

Arnulf Rainer
The Austrian artist Arnulf Rainer is represented in the collection with six works. On the occasion of the acquisition of a further work as well as two works from the Kemp collection, this body of works will be given a new presentation. Rainer’s oeuvre is among the most radical positions of painting in our time; with his technique of re-painting, the artist has time and again explored the boundaries of the medium. The work group of the museum kunst palast collection comprises the artist’s most important creative periods since the 1950s.

Clemens Weiss
Using glued together recycled window glass, Clemens Weiss creates curious ‘homes’ for this drawings and records. In contrast to ordinary cases, these sculptures have no opening – they must be destroyed in order to reach the content. The transparent glass grants an insight and yet refuses access. The accessibility of art – both in the physical and figurative sense – is being addressed here and inspires new perspectives on contemporary art.

Clemens Weiss (born in Krefeld in 1955) lives in New York City and Mönchengladbach. His works touch upon three of the museum’s focal areas: The Hentrich Glass Museum, in whose exhibition hall the show will be staged, the Collection of Prints and Drawings and, of course, the Department of Modern Art.