Museum in Tehran to focus on injustice

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Günther Uecker will present a series of shows devoted to German modern and contemporary artists to be held at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

An exhibition focused on abuses of human rights with elements of Christian iconography will open at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art next month, reported The Art Newspaper.

The show, dedicated to the German sculptor and kinetic artist Günther Uecker, includes 14 works from the series “The Human Abused: 14 Pacified Implements,” which was commissioned in 1992 by the Berlin-based Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (IFA), a cultural organization funded by the German government. Violence against foreigners based in Germany prompted Uecker to create the Arte Povera-esque works which incorporate materials such as nails, stones and ash.

Injury of human being

“In these works, Uecker expresses his visions of life and life’s suffering and tries to reveal, in his sensitive setting of signs, basic human drives: aggression, injury, destruction, setting against them gestures of reconciliation,” says the institute’s website for the exhibition. The series focuses on the “injury of human being by human being.” The works are based on the stations of the cross, which as elements of Christian iconography may raise eyebrows in the Iranian capital.

The exhibition, which will run between Sept. 16 and Oct. 31, is also set to include 88 works provided by Uecker, who joined the Zero Group in 1961. Zero Group is an avant-garde Düsseldorf-based collective that declared art should be ultra-minimalist, starting from “point zero.” The show is funded by IFA, the German Embassy, the Goethe-Institut and Geuer & Breckner. The Uecker exhibition is the latest in a series of shows devoted to German modern and contemporary artists to be held at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2008, for instance, the Iranian authorities held an exhibition of works by late expressionist artists Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Barlach at the museum.