Martin Kippenberger

Commemorating the 20th anniversary of Martin Kippenberger's passing and for the first time on view in New York, a recreation of the artist's book vitrine as it was installed in Candidature à une rétrospective at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris in 1993. A personal letter recalls the installation: “As is so often the case with Martin Kippenberger, there must also be a reference to the place, which for the Paris exhibition, was slightly exaggerated with the most banal stereotypes. In this case, for the poster and for the catalog, the typography was of the metro and for the exhibition space, Paris itself became a ‘city of showcases’ and love. On the central axis of the exhibition rooms was a continuous series of vitrines, in which all of his books and catalogs, as well as invitation cards, posters and other print matter could be presented.

The 16 meter long partition penetrated the exhibition architecture, so that the real showcase happened in a third room,” the back room, which contained the artists erotic collection, partitioned by various curtains. This replica of the installation at OSMOS has been realized with photography by Andrea Stappert in collaboration with 8. Salon in Hamburg. Co-curators, Cay-Sophie Rabinowitz, Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil have assembled a special collection of drawings, print editions, ephemera and performance documents spanning Martin Kippenberger's prolific and provocative artistic production.

To this day, Kippinberger inspires and haunts us with his insouciant genius.

Martin Kippenberger: Twenty Years later, A Wake is part of a year-long series of projects that reflect on the 20 years Osmos has been in existence since its’ founding in Berlin in 1997. Osmos Address in New York is a project space for art gatherings and exhibitions in the East Village storefront that was once a saloon frequented in the 19th Century by Emma Goldman and other radicals. In the back, the OSMOS editorial office occupies the former printing offices of a German language newspaper.