Installation and Performances at the Krefeld Art Museum, from May 24 to October 6, 2024

Curated by Dr. Magdalena Holzhey and Dr. Sylvia Martin

Materials: Textiles, 2 Studio Lamps Prolycht Orion 300 FS, Aputure LS C300D II Kit Bowens, 3 Aputure Light Dome II, 3 Tripods, Whistle, Magazine (Art Nouveau from 1898), Glasses, Cocktail Shaker, Sponsored Bar with Bar Furnishings, Fan, Cash Register, Socialist Dining Table with 2 Chairs, Samovar, Small Pot, Vase, Carousel Toaster, 6 Mannequins, 8 Book Editions, Suitcase, Home Organ, Cupboard, 2 Chests of Drawers, Ceramic Pot, A Table with 4 Chairs, Wall Clock, Sugar Bowl, 10 Handmade Postcards, Space Heater, Vat, Laundry Bucket, Washboard, Laundry Pounder, Japanese Woodblock Print, 6 Advertising Posters, Screen (Paravent)

Size: Variable

Between Art and Everyday Life, Fiction and Reality dispersed non-existence (2024) by Liora Epstein

Guests are sitting at a bar in Krefeld, talking. They have never met before. This is not an everyday bar on an entertainment strip or in a public house: but rather in the large skylight hall of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum. Outside it is summer, and the futuristic counter where the strangers meet this afternoon forms the center of the installation „dispersed non existence.“ Liora Epstein, was invited to the venue for her major solo exhibition as part of the „Collection Satellite“ project.

The scene is surreal. Illuminated by colored studio lamps, the wide, high room is occupied by six mannequins portraying different characters. For each of these characters, there is a „Diary of Bad Deeds“ in the exhibition, in which the figures reveal their stories. Epstein, who in addition to her artistic training at the Düsseldorf Academy completed a degree in fashion design, tailor-made each of these costumes for people from her personal circle. At the same time, Epstein had each of these people write a diary. Through mutual exchange, auto-fictional life stories, interwoven memories, but above all, the ambivalence between identity and claim, emerged, which the artist stages and makes palpable in her installation.

Epstein calls the bar at the center „the so-called present.“ It serves as a meeting point: visitors can survey the complex installation from there and leaf through the diaries of the isolated characters. This afternoon, the bar is „activated.“ A tall bartender with wild curls is present in the exhibition at selected times, serving drinks to the guests. As time flies over a glass of Crémant, the line between what was clearly art and what was supposed to be familiar everyday life upon entering the room increasingly blurs.

Epstein plays with these shifts in boundaries: reality and fiction, work of art and artistic experience. In her space, these relationships are not polar but continuous. Visitors are actors, figures in their own right. The bar, a genuinely social space, becomes evident in this context for its function as a stage where everyone tells and imagines their own story. Surrounded by the plurality of surreal narratives in the Krefeld exhibition, everyone is invited to behave with art as art, for and away from art, and above all: because of art. (Text: Amelie Gappa)

Realized with the kind support of the Stiftung der Sparda-Bank West, Party.Rent Group, and the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf.

Edition box, created on the occasion of the exhibition The Bar. Liora Epstein in Dialogue with Jürgen Drescher and Reinhard Mucha, 2024

In collaboration with the Büro für Produktbeschwerung

4 Diaries of Evil Deeds, 1 textile piece (unique), 1 original photograph, 1 leporello with texts and exhibition views, handcrafted archival box

It recalls the historical concept of the “museum in a box,” a miniature museum experience that was presented in various forms by artists such as Hilma af Klint and Marcel Duchamp in the early 20th century.
The exhibition experience becomes accessible in two ways: through an illustrated leporello and through the four Diaries of Evil Deeds, which contain the perspectives and stories of the characters introduced in the exhibition. In addition, the box includes a textile piece as a standalone artwork and a greeting card from the character Karl Florjan, who was first introduced in the context of the 2024 exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Krefeld.
The Bar is a process-based work of mine that expands with each new presentation, incorporating additional characters from different times and places.

• Edition Size: 4 Copies (3/4 available)
• Price: Upon request
• Available at: Museum Shop, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum, Joseph-Beuys-Platz 1, 47798 Krefeld

Image 1-13 Installation View and Opening „Collection Satellite #9. The Bar. Liora Epstein in Dialogue with Jürgen Drescher and Reinhard Mucha“, 2024
Photos by Dirk Rose

Image 14-22 Editions Box for the exhibition „Collection Satellite #9. The Bar. Liora Epstein in Dialogue with Jürgen Drescher and Reinhard Mucha“, 2024

Photos by Felix Adam

© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn