Language, text, and image rank among the foremost human means of expression used to create meaning. They are thus not neutral, but related to specific values, norms, and cultural techniques, and are integrated into social systems. Inevitably they also serve to draw boundaries that include but also exclude people. Where are these boundaries of what can be said or what is seen? Or, to rephrase the question, who or what decides whether something can be expressed or become visible? And how do those who are excluded—the groups and individuals who have apparently been deprived of their voice and visibility—react to mechanisms of such a demonstration of power?

The exhibition in MAIN SPACE focuses on these questions based on select twentieth- and twenty-first-century artworks primarily focus on the relationship between language, text, and image, but which do not use them exclusively as visual design elements. Rather, the primary focus is their particular mediatic possibilities for making something expressible, visible, and audible. The artworks point to the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, of attributions and their corresponding narratives, questioning and shifting them as the case may be. At the same time, they also make references to fragility and ambiguity and provide opportunities for appropriations and transfers of meaning.

Artists (selection)
John Baldessari, Alejandro Cesarco, Ayşe Erkmen, Nadine Fecht, Janice Kerbel, Gordon Parks, The National AIDS Memorial, Markus Vater, Gillian Wearing