Truth is work.

The Villa Schöningen on the banks of the Glienicke Bridge in Potsdam, a place of encounter and exchange between East and West, presents the exhibition “Truth is Work” featuring works from the Falckenberg Collection by Werner Büttner, Martin Kippenberger, and Albert Oehlen.

The title refers to an exhibition curated by Zdenek Felix at the Folkwang Museum in Essen in 1984, featuring these three artists. They claimed the right to comment on every cultural misdevelopment and to seal almost every noteworthy event with art so that nothing would be lost from the beautiful imposition of life.

One could almost speak of a whimsical claim to exclusive representation, and the adhesive that bound this group to the times was their laughter against everything. The intention was to subvert the prevailing system of order and culture with corrosive satire. “Every person is an artist” was Joseph Beuys’s creed in the early ’70s. “Every artist is a person” was Kippenberger’s laconic response barely ten years later.