Description

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Photographs, books, and knickknacks: artists collect a variety of objects. While artists generate personal collections, which often address different formal, aesthetic, or conceptual concerns, it is difficult to separate this activity from their artistic practices. Over time, whether intended or not, such accumulations of items may become works of art.

Individual Stories considers the collection as a portrait of its collector and also as an artistic method—as a process rather than an end result. The act of collecting is multifarious—it can be an expression of curiosity, a desire to transform things that have been discovered, or a systematic approach to certain objects in the world. This catalogue is a compilation of individual collections that could not be more different.

Copublished with Kunsthalle Wien to document the exhibition “Individual Stories: Collecting as Portrait and Methodology,” Kunsthalle Wien, June 26–October 11, 2015.

Contributors
Saâdane Afif, Jacques André, Marie Angeletti, Thomas Bayrle, Barbara Bloom, Herbert Brandl, Andrea Büttner, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Camille Henrot, Michaela Maria Langenstein, Pierre Leguillon, Hanne Lippard, Maurizio Nannucci, G. T. Pellizzi, Max Renkel, Michael Riedel, Hubert Scheibl, Yann Sérandour, John Stezaker, Johannes Wohnseifer; with images by Marie Angeletti

About the Author

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Nicolaus Schafhausen is a curator at the Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism in Munich.