Uncategorized
After facts — Pudding Explosion rearticulated

.

Thomas Baldischwyler, Thomas Bayrle, Max Eulitz, Zac Langdon-Pole, Anna McCarthy, Luzie Meyer, Jennifer Lyn Morone, Peter Roehr, Alex Turgeon, Jasmin Werner curated by the students of the Curatorial Studies Master‘s program at the Goethe-University Frankfurt and the Staatlichen Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule.

Where is the line between opinion and fact? When does an object become information? And when in this process does it transform into a fetish? What is the validity of these divisions in the light of social media and algorithmically generated purchase recommendations? Using the dispositions of an exhibition, After facts would like to pursue and complexify these questions and at the same time show alternative forms of knowledge production and commodity culture.

The impetus of the exhibition has been the headshop Pudding Explosion, which was initiated in 1968 by the conceptual artist Peter Roehr (1944–68) together with his later gallerist Paul Maenz in the heart of Frankfurt. The goods assortment ranged from pop culture committed items, such as music and band buttons, to international newspapers and Maoist manifestos, providing youth and counterculture with identity-confirming objects, information and opinions. Against the backdrop of the growing importance of digital space, After facts is devoted to an updating of these subject areas.

A project initiated by the Master program Curatorial Studies, the exhibition materialises as a display of ten positions of international artists in a former pharmacy in Frankfurt Westend. Their work, among them five new productions, approach the mechanisms of information and merchandise exchange in the digital and post-factual age from different angles.