10/10/2024 – 10/11/2024,

What did you expect?

, Leopold-Hoesch-Museum

What did you expect? presents ten artistic positions from Germany and Switzerland that deal with the spatial and structural limits of the exhibition as a normative framework for the display of art. Invited artists are Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, Olga Holzschuh, Alexander Janz, Florence Jung, Stefanie Klingemann, Sophie Pape, Simon Risi, Pauline Simon, Cassidy Toner and Philipp Valenta.

What characterizes art? When is an object considered a work of art? What role does an exhibition play in the perception of art? Working with these questions, the curators Roger Rohrbach and Simon Würsten Marin have conceived the exhibition What did you expect? for the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum Düren.

Through subtle interventions, reductive strategies and minimal or invisible gestures, the artworks presented – some of which were specially developed for the museum's spaces – challenge visitors to actively participate in the exhibition and to question their view and their role in interpreting the art on display. Many works in the exhibition are intangible, for example, or are not immediately recognizable as works of art in their appearance, such as the title of the exhibition, which is itself a production of the artist Cassidy Toner. Other works subtly engage with the exhibition spaces, for example through sound, smells or minimal architectural and conceptual gestures. With these unusual, sometimes unwieldy works of art, the exhibition What did you expect? invites visitors – with subtle humor – to reflect on essential concepts of art such as authorship and creativity as well as their expectations and ideas of an exhibition.

Opening: Wednesday, 9.10.2024, 6:00 pm

Art & chat: Saturday, 26.10.2024, 11:00 am with Stefanie Klingemann and Roger Rohrbach