Great Value (I)

13.09.2005 — 08.10.2005

Great Value was a series of exhibitions that, between September and December, presented young artist-positions in the foyer of the Frankfurter Kunstverein. The series, which is supported by the Dresdner Bank, is concerned with social categories of value. It has to do with moral and social questions as well as cultural definitions of meaning and value. The exhibitions was accompanied by a symposium.

In the first exhibition of the Great Value series, the Berlin based artist Simone Gilges (*1973) exhibited her magazine “freier” as well as works by artists participating in the magazine.

„Neue Dokumente“ is the name of a publisher based in a shop in Berlin, which from 2003-4 served as workshop and event- and presentation space for the associated artists. Gilges has since 2003 published “freier – Magazin für Befindlichkeit – Sammelband zur Zeit” under the same label. In four thematic parts, planned to be collected in an anthology, themes related to sentitivities at the beginning of the millennium are treated. “freier” is published with contributions both from a longstanding circle of friends and from selected guests. Emotions are in the foreground in the contributions, which partly in an associative style, partly in interviews and texts, describe an atmosphere that can be understood as a comment on contemporary political and cultural discourses, beyond private matters. In the thematic foci such as Geist-Zeit, Stand-Land and Ost-West the artistic contributions find freely associative connecting points and thereby negotiate nonchalantly different life-models and social concepts of value.