The audibility of art

Art in boardrooms is often decorative and uncontroversial. Most corporate collections reflect this approach. Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) is a notable exception: it has built up one of Germany's most significant corporate collections of modern and contemporary art. It all began in 1971 with an acquisition budget for the gallery of the Städtische Spar- und Girokasse Stuttgart. Its profile is now characterised by its participation in political discourse and its rejection of taboos. That is why LBBW attaches great importance to partnerships, for example with the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the Kunsthalle Mannheim, but also with ART COLOGNE, in order to promote dialogue with the public. Last year, LBBW was present at the Cologne fair with the special exhibition ‘Transitions,’ which showed positions focusing on transitions in space, time, society and culture. We asked Barbara Thomann, curator at LBBW, about the plans for this year's fair appearance.

Ms Thomann, what will be the focus of this year's special exhibition of the LBBW Collection at ART COLOGNE?

Entitled ‘Klangwelten’ (Worlds of Sound), this year's presentation brings together works from the LBBW Collection that are connected in very different ways with sounds, noises or musical culture – sometimes directly, sometimes covertly, sometimes purely associatively.

How many works from the more than 3,000 pieces owned by Landesbank Baden-Württemberg did you select, and based on what criteria?

Around 30 works from the LBBW collection will be on display. Under the question ‘Is art audible and sound visible?’, the selection presents works from the collection that show artistic positions in new and sometimes surprising combinations. For me, an important aspect of the selection is also the media diversity of the artworks: from drawings, videos and paintings to three-dimensional works. All of the works on display allow the collection to resonate in new ways: they provide insights into the diverse focus of the LBBW collection and show how a lively, multi-voiced collection has developed over more than 50 years.

What time period does the exhibition cover?

The exhibition covers painting from the 1930s to contemporary art.

Who created the most recent and oldest works?

The oldest work is the painting ‘Hymn to an Unknown God’ by Max Ackermann from 1930, one of the most prominent representatives of abstract art in Germany. The most recent work is ‘I can be what you need’ by Rebekka Benzenberg, born in 1990, from 2023. She studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in the classes of Ellen Gallagher, Rita McBride and Franka Hörnschemeyer, graduating as a master student in 2020. She combines pop culture references and art historical quotations with emblems of status and power to open up new perspectives on female representations in art history.

Which works are particularly interesting?

There will be some exciting new additions on display this year. They demonstrate the enormous diversity of our collection. Visitors to the fair can look forward to the video work ‘Le Chant de Maison’ (2022) by Annika Kahrs. In this work, the artist explores the interface between art and music, while also highlighting the social and cultural dimensions of acoustic information in the performance shown. The focus is on an abandoned church belonging to the weavers' guild – a place that symbolises the tension between traditional craftsmanship and modern technology. One of Gregor Hildebrandt's cassette type cases will be on display. The artist works with analogue data carriers – in this case cassette boxes – and breathes new, invisible life into the work through the musical history of the material.