Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami

Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne From May 11th through Jul 15th, 2007The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami promises to refresh the hot air in Miami by bringing German art into our scene. With Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne, the museum is bringing together three generations of European and American artists that once interacted in the city of Cologne, Germany, in a time when the city was acknowledged as one of the most important centers for contemporary art in Europe. During the 1980’s and early 1990’s, German artists like Martin Kippenberger, Rosemarie Trockel and Albert Oehlen met with few American artists such as Los Angeles-based Mike Kelley while exhibiting their works in Cologne. Out of their interaction and without even knowing it, these artists would help redirect the attention of the art world on the already decadent “German Neo-Expressionism” – represented by a former generation of artists like Ansel Kiefer or Georg Baselitz – towards a different kind of art. An art that questioned the relation of the artists with the community as well as redefined art as a social attitude. Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne was organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and has been curated by Bennett Simpson, Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Artists included in this exhibition are Bernadette Corporation, Cosima von Bonin, Merlin Carpenter, Stephan Dillemuth, Michaela Eichwald, Andrea Fraser, Kim Gordon, Charline von Heyl, Gareth James, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Jutta Koether, Michael Krebber, Louise Lawler, Hans-Jorg Mayer, Lucy McKenzie, Nils Norman, Albert Oehlen, Christian Philipp Muller, Stephen Prina, Josephine Pryde, Blake Rayne, Reena Spaulings, Josef Strau, Rosemarie Trockel, Filmgruppe West, Christopher Williams, and Christopher Wool, among others. The exhibition will be on view until July 15th, 2007.