Hannah Wilke
in ‘Ecstasy’, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
29 September 2018 – 24 February 2019
Hannah Wilke, Hello Boys, 1975. Courtesy: © Marsie, Emanuelle, Damon and Andrew Scharlatt, Hannah Wilke Collection & Archive, Los Angeles; licensed by VAGA at Artist’s Rights Society (ARS), New York, and DACs, London
‘Ecstasy’, 2018–19, exhibition view, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Courtesy: Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
Hannah Wilke is featured in the exhibition ‘Ecstasy’ at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, which has been curated by Anne Vieth and is on view from 29 September 2018 – 24 February 2019.
Ecstasy is one of the oldest and one of the most astounding phenomena of European and non-European cultures. In its cultural significance and complexity, ecstasy also entered the visual arts and engaged in extraordinary alliances with the related disciplines of music and dance.
Beginning in the fall of 2018, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart will, for the first time, trace these and other connections as it dedicates itself to the phenomenon of ecstasy in a large thematic exhibition. Drawing from paradigmatic examples from antiquity to the present, the exhibition illuminates the various spiritual, political, psychological, social, sexual, and aesthetic implications of euphoric and intoxicated states between asceticism and excess.
In approximately ten thematic rooms, the visitor will become familiar with the various faces of ecstasy and with the shifting social significance of mind-altering states as it changed over the centuries. In so doing, it will also consider how different cultural spheres handle the phenomenon of ecstasy. With art at its foundation, the exhibition will introduce the viewer to the various ways that artists have approached ecstatic states – from pictorial representations to video and installation works to kinesthetic experiences.