The principle focus of the exhibition venture, which was initially introduced on the Munich Documentation Centre for the Historical past of Nationwide Socialism in 2019, is the illustration of the e-book, meant as an object capable of transcend its mere position of narrative software so as to turn into a residing metaphor. In Annette Kelm’s work, the e-book turns into a fraction of a selected historic time and a vessel for a strong reflection, articulated across the weight of the previous and the impression it has on the current.
The exhibition is organized round an itinerary of photographic pictures, a collection of photographs rigorously designed by the artist to image a sadly well-known chapter within the historical past of the twentieth century. Every of the 104 pictures arrange on the primary ground of the Basis depicts one of many volumes that had been banned by the Nationwide Socialists ranging from Might 10, 1933, when a gaggle of scholars set greater than 30,000 books on hearth in Berlin’s Obernplatz. The burning, which marked the place to begin of the gradual public opinion alignment with the political occasion that had impressed it, additionally marked the start of persecutions of writers and intellectuals who had been towards these political beliefs. Among the many authors who had been banned there have been some famend writers similar to Erich Kästner and Stefan Zweig alongside lesser-known names, in addition to authors of youngsters’s books.
The analysis initiated by Annette Kelm noticed the artist specializing in a real research of editions, which led to the cautious collection of a collection of volumes, from each private and non-private collections, revealed between 1913 and 1944. Kelm’s curiosity is particularly directed in direction of a peculiar cultural and concrete spirit, reflecting the avant-garde actions from the Twenties and Thirties. Kelm pays a specific consideration to the design of covers, which, within the wake of the E-book Artwork motion, was impressed by the improvements promoted by up to date artwork actions similar to Expressionism, Constructivism, Bauhaus and Dada. Annette Kelm’s destroyed books are portrayed in accordance with exact formal standards and so they come again to life, regaining their very own dignity, via the lens of the digital camera. The artist labored on the collection from 2019 to 2021, concluding the analysis final 12 months.
By a two-dimensional and serial aesthetic, emphasised by way of sober backgrounds and impartial lighting, Annette Kelm builds a bridge between previous and current, the place all historic limitations are overcome in an pressing and deeply related evaluation.

at Fondazione ICA, Milan
till October 15, 2022