"CHAV KUNST introduces the idiosyncratic index of one whose ‘essential solitude’* is defined by a history of poverty. It explores what happens when those excluded from privilege claim space in the institutions of art — when people from under/working-class or marginalised backgrounds enter the library, the gallery, the canon, and begin to rewrite what counts as culture.
This lecture reflects on dismantling privilege, not the privileged. It asks what contemporary art loses when it denies its contact with poverty — and what new languages, sensitivities, and forms of knowledge emerge when poverty itself becomes a site of aesthetic and critical insight.
In doing so, CHAV KUNST expands the meaning of ‘poverty’ beyond the absence of wealth to include poverties of empathy, of imagination, of connection — conditions that can touch even the most privileged.
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*Maurice Blanchot Space of Literature. 1955
Borrowing instruments and strategies from the practices of the sculptor, the writer, and the typographer, British artist Michael Dean investigates the relationship between text and physicality. Exploring the three-dimensional possibilities of language, Dean often “spells out” his words through an alphabet of human-scale shapes, employing industrial and everyday materials such as concrete, steel, MDF, padlocks, and dyed books of his writings.
Michael Dean (b. 1977, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK) lives and works in London. Dean studied at Goldsmiths, University of London. He gained international stature as one of the four finalists of the 2016 Turner Prize. In 2017, Dean participated in the Skulptur Projekte, Munster and was nominated for the 2018 Hepworth Prize for Sculpture. Dean’s feature in several prominent institutional collections, such as Tate Modern, London; Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; S.M.A.K., Ghent; Arts Council Collection, London; The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield; and Nasher Sculpture Center; Dallas.
This event is part of the exhibition and research project ‘Social Class & Landscape’ of Klasse Nicole Wermers. The lecture will be held in English."