In just a few weeks the second part of the exhibition Ideal City –Invisible Cities
will open. Forty-one international artists will reflect from 8
September 2006 onward the ideal city and its sibling, the invisible
city in Potsdam, Germany:

Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Francis Alys, Carl Andre, Archigram, Colin
Ardley, Tim Ayres, Miroslaw Balka, Daniela Brahm, Pedro Cabrita Reis,
Rui Calcada Bastos, Constant, Jonas Dahlberg, Tacita Dean, Jaroslaw
Flicinski, Carlos Garaicoa, Dan Graham, George Hadjimichalis, Rula
Halawani, Franka Hoernschemeyer, Craigie Horsfield, Katarzyna
Jozefowicz, Jakob Kolding, Ola Kolehmainen, Lucas Lenglet, Sol LeWitt,
David Maljkovic, Gerold Miller, Matthias Mueller, Teresa Murak, Brian
O’Connell, Daniel Roth, Albrecht Schaefer, Kai Schiemenz, Les
Schliesser, Melanie Smith, Monika Sosnowska, David Tremlett, Anton
Vidokle, Lawrence Weiner, Tilman Wendland, Krzysztof Zielinski

Curated by Sabrina van der Ley and Markus Richter / European Art Projects
Patron: Matthias Platzeck, Prime Minister of Brandenburg

Preview: 8 September, noon – 6 pm
Opening: 8 September, 6-10 pm
Symposium: 9 September, noon-5 pm

A central concern of the exhibition is to confront the artists with two
plans of ‘Ideal Cities’, or with what has survived of them to this day.
Not only the two historical cities but also the underlying invisible
cities, hidden by time and history became the points of reference for
the works of contemporary artists from twelve European and six
non-European countries.

After its first venue in Zamosc, Poland, an extraordinary treasure of late Renaissance architecture, Ideal City –Invisible Cities now
moves on to the baroque town of Potsdam. Unlike Zamosc whose old town
is almost completely preserved, Potsdam has seen major changes during
the centuries. Potsdam’s old centre was almost entirely destroyed in WW
II and parts of the early baroque city extensions including the city’s
castle were subsequently torn down. Today Potsdam’s new centre is a
melange of restored baroque architecture and buildings from the sixties
to the present, more a collage than an ideal or even planned city.

The artists working site-specifically will react to the disparate body
of the city and insert their work in public spaces and buildings,
courtyards or squares. Most projects are characterized by a distanced,
critical and sometimes even ironic way of dealing with the planned
urban space. The artists are seeking ways to transpose the pre-existing
historical situation into their present and their experience of the
city. They are reacting to the city as an artificial body, to which
they are adding something, partially completing it, filling a gap. They
explore the psychogeography of the city or pursue urban archaeology.
They are analysing structures, grids, proportions and functions, making
them the basis of their interventions. Monika Sosnowska places a dirty
fountain in the wilderness of Staudenhof, while Miroslaw Balka
sculpture reflects wounds, deeply cut during the second World War.
Daniela Brahm and Colin Ardley determine squares and public spaces
anew, Franka Hoernschemeyer comments with her installation on the grid
of the city plan and Lucas Lenglet creates a sombre Potsdam columbarium
for the garden of an apartment building. Les Schliesser continues to
narrate the story of his fictive Zamosc born architect Mikolaj
Chrupkowski now working in Potsdam, Jakob Kolding points out the traps
of functional city planning with a poster project and Craigie Horsfield
introduces a site-specific sound installation. Tilman Wendland’s
installation at Brandenburgischer Kunstverein sculpturally analyzes
ideal city plans of the moderns Le Corbusier, Niemeyer and Hansen and
Jaroslaw Flicinski will install a large wall painting at the gallery of
the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam.

Besides the site specific interventions works by 25 artists relating to
the main themes of the exhibition including architectural critique,
memory and the grid will be shown in altogether five exhibition venues:
Brandenburgischer Kunstverein, the gallery of the University of Applied
Sciences Potsdam, a historical residential building, an old military
hospital and the former theatre building..

All in walking distance, the exhibition will cover a trail through
Potsdam’s first and second baroque city extensions from 8 September,
2006 until 29 October, 2006.

Ideal City - Invisible Cities is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

Further generous support is kindly provided by the Adam Mickiewicz
Institute, Warsaw and the City of Zamosc. Additional funds thanks to
the British Council, Berlin; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon;
Filigran Group, Leese, Ford Foundation, Cairo; Henry Moore Foundation,
Perry Green; Instituto das Artes, Lisbon; Luso-American Foundation,
Lisbon; Mondriaan Stichting, Amsterdam, Paschal-Werk G. Maier GmbH,
Steinach and Wienerberger Ziegelindustrie, Hannover.

Project Partners Potsdam: Brandenburgischer Kunstverein, Potsdam;
Filmmuseum Potsdam, Foundation „Grosses Waisenhaus zu Potsdam“; Greige
– Buero fuer Design, Berlin; Hans-Otto-Theater, Potsdam; Haus der
Brandenburgisch-Preussischen Geschichte, Potsdam; University of Applied
Sciences, Potsdam; Zentralverband Sanitaer, Heizung, Klima; Potsdam.