Kunstverein Wolfsburg BLACKED OUT - Retrospektive George Cup & Steve Elliott The French Collection 26.09. - 16.11.2008 For the first time in Germany, the Wolfsburg Art Association, in cooperation with the Nordhorn Municipal Gallery, is presenting a comprehensive overview exhibition of the German-American artist duo George Cup & Steve Elliott. The works of the "French Collection" gathered in the Wolfsburg Art Association range from installations, objects and paintings to artist books and video and experimental films by the co-founders of American minimal art. "Blacked Out" is the first retrospective of the artist duo, whose public reception has been systematically blocked since 1986, following Cup's imprisonment. It is thanks to the George Cup Research Center, founded in Hanover and New York in 2006, that the exhibitions in Wolfsburg and Nordhorn - the artists' birthplaces - have come about, overshadowed by the unexpected death of George Cup in July 2008 in New York. Reduced geometric surfaces of different sizes, but always related to human proportions, can be found in all of the artists' works. A particular focus in the art association, a room-filling installation, is complemented by wall objects combined with fluorescent tubes from the late 1960s as well as paintings created between 1956 and 1962 in which three-dimensional objects are integrated. Here we can already see the development of a groundbreaking new vocabulary of reduced three-dimensional bodies, a formal language that characterizes the late work of Cup and Elliott. In later years, the static forms of the oil paintings are set in motion by animated films, with the interplay of movement and music taking up and reinterpreting the tradition of Oskar Fischinger, Hans Richter and other representatives of early abstract film. "The connection between form and sound" comprises 26 animated films that were created between 1974 and 1979 on 8 mm film and were digitally reworked especially for the exhibition due to their poor condition. In the experimental film Loop # 25 from 1975, the camera moves towards a photograph that Cup is holding in his hands, which in turn shows Cup with a photograph in his hands. For over 5 minutes, the camera zooms in a straight line through the locations depicted in the various photographs. Other animated films and kinetic objects as well as artist books and the video installation BLACK BOX # 2 from 1979 offer a comprehensive overview of the work of George Cup & Steve Elliott. The retrospective is completed by the second part: "Blacked Out - The Greenspan Collection", which opens in December 2008 in the Städtische Galerie Nordhorn. Exhibition view: Kunstverein Wolfsburg, BLACKED OUT, Retrospektive, George Cup & Steve Elliott, The French Collection, © All photos: Seth Widman, 2008