In collaboration with LLS Paleis
The title of this exhibition is an invitation Ingeborg Lüscher (°1936, Freiberg) has already expressed more than 500 times to friends, artists and acquaintances, asking them to perform in front of her camera:
“Please do magic, whatever that may mean for you right now.”
The series Zaubererfotos / Magician Photos, to which this exhibition is devoted, has been a thread running through her oeuvre since 1976. Almost the entire emerging generation of artists who were active from the beginning of the 1980s until today – including Andy Warhol, Pipilotti Rist, Lawrence Weiner, Ai Wei Wei, Carolee Schneemann and many others – are featured in the Magician Photos. In the broad sense of the word, these are her contemporaries.
Lüscher formulates her request and does not enter into a discussion. They form a duo, one waiting, the other in a situation of supreme tension, alone, thrown back only on themself. And that is where the real wonder begins, the magic. There are no more rehearsed smiles, no modelling. What becomes visible here illustrates Beuys’s statement that “every person is an artist.”
Although large parts of this extensive oeuvre have already been exhibited in various European museums, the Magician Photos have never been seen in Belgium before. Lichtekooi Artspace and LLS Paleis are therefore delighted to exhibit them here for the first time.
The exhibition is an homage to the imagination and creativity of human beings. Ingeborg Lüscher makes this visible in a unique way through this special form of portrait photography.
Ingeborg Lüscher (°Freiberg, Germany) studied acting in West Berlin and worked in the following years as an actress in the theater and films. She is an autodidact in figurative art. In 1969 she discovered the hermit and visionary Armand Schulthess, who had set up an open-air encyclopedia in his forest. She documented his work, and in 1972 she was invited by Harald Szeemann to exhibit at documenta 5, which was also the beginning of their lifelong relationship. Her oeuvre includes many forms of expression such as painting, photography, sculpture, installations, videos, and literature. It deals with themes such as birth and death, the experience of light and darkness, and also political issues.
Artists: Ingeborg Lüscher
