Collectors'Choice I emerged in the context of the exhibition “;Vertrautes Terrain. Contemporary Art in and about Germany”;,which was shown last year at the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art. The works that are to be exhibited in Collectors'Choice I are drawn from the Boros, Grässlin Landesbank Baden-Württemberg collections and were selected in close collaboration with these. The focus of the selection centered both on art produced in Germany as well as on works specifically dedicated to German themes and events past and present. Extending back to the beginning of the 1980s, Collectors'Choice I thus presents not only insights into individual forms of collecting history and politics but also into German art history. In this way, the newly presented exhibition facilitates a reencounter with established positions such as the meanwhile internationally famous Becher-School, with Stephan Balkenhol, Rosemarie Trockel or Andreas Slominski, or the fiercely and provocative works by such artists as Werner Büttner, Georg Herold and Franz West. Among the works from a total of 40 artists, and alongside “;classics”; spanning the last thirty years there are also
more recent positions by Jonathan Meese, Tobias Rehberger, Daniel Richter and Thomas Zipp, for example.
In addition to the first part of the exhibition “;Collectors'Choice”; works will be shown from the FER Collection, the Siegfried Weishaupt and the VAF Collection on the mezzanine floor of the ZKM|Museum for Contemporary Art. Hence, on the occasion of the ten year anniversary of the Museum of Contemporary Art, through to mid October all the collections that have collaborated with the ZKM will be represented by numerous works. As a recent addition, Collectors’ Choice II shows a small art historical retrospective and overview of important tendencies in art of the second half of the 20th century; among others, these will include Conceptual Art, Op Art, Kinetics, Pop Art and the abstract art of the 1960s and 1970s. In this connection works by Mark Rothko, On Kawara, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Hanne Darboven and Bruno Munari can be viewed.
Works by Markus Oehlen and Walter Dahn are exemplary compliments to the painting of the Junge Wilden (Wild Youth) of the 1980s. The arc spanning to the present is completed by a series of contemporary works drawn from three private collections extending from figurative painting through conceptual approaches and video art, thus demonstrating the broad scope of interests among the collectors at the ZKM|Museum of Contemporary Art. Here, among others, works by Davide La Rocca, Mathieu Mercier, Gerold Miller, Vincent Szarek, Isabell Heimerdinger and Chiara Dynys will be exhibited.