A private preview of the exhibition “K” took place at the Prada Foundation in Milan, which will be open until July 27, 2020. Curator Udo Kittelmann told “TheStatusSymbol.com” about how the exhibition is organized and why it is worth visiting, like the entire Foundation complex.
Understanding Kafka
Project “K” combines an installation by Martin Kippenberger, the film “The Trial” by Orson Welles, and the music of Tangerine Dream, occupying three main buildings of the Foundation. The installation, film and music were inspired by Franz Kafka's novels America, The Trial and The Castle.
How to watch the exhibition
According to curator Udo Kittelmann, you need to set aside a whole day, at least three hours, to visit the exhibition. First, you need to immerse yourself in Kafka’s melancholy, but perfectly conveying the state of Kafka’s characters, then watch Orson Welles’ film “The Trial” at the Fonda cinema and end the day looking at Martin Kippenberger’s installation “The Happy Ending of Franz Kafka’s Amerika.”
Mixing installation, film, music and literature allows the curator and the foundation to cross cultural boundaries and most fully immerse the viewer in the worldview of artists and art visionaries.
The exhibition is a triptych, a novel in three parts, like the literary trinity of Kafka himself, its main ideological inspirer. Starting from Kafka, the curator discovered a reimagining of his legacy in film, music and installation. According to friends, the German artist Martin Kippenberger had never read Kafka, but was familiar with his novels through retellings. He created a moving interpretation of the end of the novel "America", presented in an exhibition at the Prada Foundation.
“You have to give up to be honest,” — Udo Kittelmann
“You have to stop to remain honest,” curator Kittelmann concludes the meaning and relevance of the novel “America.” In the installation “The Happy Ending of Franz Kafka's Amerika,” Kippenberger places a variety of tables and chairs for job interviews on a huge football field. Life is a game, and in the era of tough capitalism it is a tough competition in which the most dexterous and unprincipled wins. The novel "America", according to Kittelmann, is the most striking literary statement against the system. The film “The Trial” by Orson Welles, according to Kittelmann, gives a reason for a thoughtful viewer to doubt the primacy of law and the democracy of the modern government system. The literary heritage of Franz Kafka, the film of Orson Welles, the installation of Martin Kippenberger and the music of Tangerine Dream have never before been presented in a single cultural project, which allows for a new, yet tragic, understanding of the present and future of modern civilization. In Milan at the Prada Foundation until July 27, 2020.
About the Fund Prada in Milan
The Prada fashion brand foundation presents utopian projects, commissions contemporary artists to create works of art, and combines all possible types of art in its research and exhibition activities.
Official website and contacts http://www.fondazioneprada.org/
About Udo Kittelmann
— Former director of the National Gallery Berlin
— Curator of several exhibition projects at the Prada Foundation
— Curator of the Russian pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art
