Dingfest.

Tactile Sculptures in the Laboratory

20 February – 28 July, 2013
K20 GRABBEPLATZ

"… Just as painting is perceived by the eye, sculpture should be perceived by the hand, as something tactile," claimed Ewald Mataré in 1928. The laboratory, the exhibition space of the Department of Education, embraces this challenge in a presentation that parallels the exhibition Sculpture at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1945 to the Present. Visitors are invited to touch and to probe selected sculptures by Hede Bühl, Tony Cragg, Hubert Kiecol, Ewald Mataré, Wilhelm Mundt, and Leunora Salihu.

The project Dingfest is intended not just to provide new opportunities for blind or visually impaired visitors to approach the fine arts, and to enhance their knowledge of contemporary sculpture. Sighted visitors as well are offered a rare opportunity to explore the haptic qualities of works of art, to grasp their spatial dimensions in bodily terms, to re-create their processes of production on the basis of palpable traces.

The Laboratory is sponsored by the Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Rheinland and the Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf. Organized in cooperation with the Verband für Blinden- und Sehbehindertenpädagogik e.V., Landesverband Nordrhein-Westfalen (Association for the Blind and Visually-Impaired of the Federal State of North Rhine Westphalia).