The Imaginary Museum brings together a contemporary group of visual artists with a site-specific installation of Antique plaster casts. The display of the statues reconstructs an installation shot taken in 1932 in the current Kunstverein spaces – then used by Munich’s Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke (Museum of Casts of Classical Sculpture). Probably unintentionally, the photographer joined two forms of reproduction – casting and photography – that were difficult to combine in the context of the Modernist program of the 20th century. The anachronistic reputation of these collections, together with the ‘worthlessness’ of their material, has marginalised the plaster copy from critical thinking. 

In his text The Imaginary Museum of Plaster Casts, published specially to accompany the exhibition, art historian Sven Lütticken revaluates plaster cast collections and their influence on the activities of contemporary artists vis-à-vis the referencing and reproduction of visual sources. The Imaginary Museum takes this text as its cue in order to examine the relevance of plaster cast collections within a contemporary context of art production. 

A desire to be lead, just for your information

No discursive option since the adversaries are invisible

An open plan to clearly balance judgements

Automatic responses to organised pleasure

Structuring abstractions to imitate logic

Denying emotions nonetheless or rather intentionally

Gendering abilities to negotiate a path

Radical juxtapositions, yes radical juxtapositons

Allow the patriarchal figure to fade in

Please do not turn back

Allow yourself to slightly despise myths and constructs

Have your cake and eat it

Yes we can, yes we can…so we might just

The show must go on

‘Walk in an exaggerated manner around the perimeter of a square’

‘We’re nightclubbing, we walk like a ghost, we learn dances, brand new dances’

You are just ‘a slave to the rhythm’

Pursue beauty to its lair and slay it in amorous transports

Rouge noir garlands as though in a hurry, suddenly cornered at the foot of a

concrete slab

voicing uneven words of discontent

Helping masses of shapeless ideas to filter through

Decide for yourself and render the images sharper

Find comfort in the formulaic

Negating years of radicalism, showing society its spectacle once again

Identifiable references are bound to please, think of western subjectivity

The sole vivid note, now collapsing into a fathomless pit

Top, bottom or maybe versatile

Sophisticated range of submission or domination

The pink truth of positions

Observe the hyper-sensitivity of a brain fried by nitrates

Enjambements and other literary devices, do highlight the distance between us

Dishevelled hirsute after love

Suspended closure, suspended