The history of HALLENKUNST begins in the summer of 2010 with a call from Peter Waldvogel († 2022), architect and the former owner of the Markthalle Chemnitz, one of the city's most beautiful historic buildings. At the time, the hall, with its almost 5,000 square meters of usable space, was empty because various usage concepts could not be implemented. In August 2010, Mr. Waldvogel contacted the curator, film producer, and publisher René Kästner of RED TOWER to discuss a concept for the interim use of the old market hall. Mr. Kästner's expertise at that time already lay in networking and the curation and production of graffiti and street art events worldwide as well as publishing media in this field.
This is how the idea for an exhibition in the Markthalle Chemnitz, the HALLENKUNST, was born in the fall of 2010. A temporary opportunity to create a graffiti and street art platform in the heart of Chemnitz, which was able to inspire thousands of Chemnitz residents within a few days in December 2010.
René's curatorial approach even then was to show graffiti and graffiti writing in all its diversity, but not to try to musealize this subculture rooted in the street and urban space. Graffiti and street art will always be the art of the street and cannot withstand translation or decontextualization. But: the artistic biographies of the protagonists of this subculture show that the often very long time as a graffiti artist can form a very exciting creative, aesthetic, or process-oriented basis. When applied to various artistic disciplines such as graphic design, abstract art, illustration, or photography, these diverse biographies give rise to strong artistic positions that are visually, stylistically, and aesthetically very far removed from classic graffiti or street art. This was already the curatorial focus of René in the Markthalle Chemnitz at that time. One year later the biggest group show of it´s kind moved to the Messe Chemnitz Hall before René and his team left Chemnitz to travel the globe with his ideas. 15 years and several similar projects in Berlin, Dresden, or Stockholm later, the time has come again.
The idea of HALLENKUNST has been further developed in the context of Chemnitz's application to be the European Capital of Culture 2025 in the last five years and supplemented by various projects such as an Artists-in-Residence and Public Mural program. Formats that, in terms of their results and artistic works, feed into HALLENKUNST 2025 and will probably inspire thousands of people from Chemnitz and all over the world again.
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