Curator | Dimitris Paleocrassas, art historian

NEON presents the exhibition Martin Kippenberger: A Cry for Freedom at the Museum of Cycladic Art.

 Throughout history artists have looked for a greater degree of creative freedom and to broaden the definition of what constitutes a work of art. Martin Kippenberger, driven to express his intense yearning for personal freedom, mounted an extraordinarily fierce and comprehensive attack on those limits so that his life and artistic practice became interwoven, forming a consistent and constant Gezamkunstwerk (Total Art Work).

Following one rule -‘Always Break the Rules!’ – Kippenberger bravely navigated the uncharted waters of unknown territories of freedom, a dangerous operation for which he paid dearly with his untimely death at the age of 44.

Sixty years after Klippenberger’s birth, this exhibition attempts to follow his voyage; the story of a man dedicated to the pursuit of freedom against all the restraints of orthodoxy and to elucidate the multifaceted ways by which he always (ground) broke the rules.