Ideal city - invisible cities

The exhibition is dedicated to one of the outstanding cultural themes: The concept of the Ideal City. Works by 41 international artists comment and reflect on the Ideal City and its sibling the 'Invisible City'. Amongst them are 20 site-specific installations which react on the tangible cityscape and deal with the specific architectural and historical given. On the occasion of the exhibition Revolver Verlag presents an extensive catalogue in a Polish-English version and a German-English version. The catalogue includes texts on all participating artists by authors like Manuel Borja-Villel, Luca Cerizza, Sebastian Cichocki, Mark Gisbourne, Brigitte Huck, Martina Fuchs, Daniel Marzona, Kaja Pawelek, Anda Rottenberg, Susanne Titz and four essential essays, dealing with the various aspects of the theme. The exhibition curators Sabrina van der Ley and Markus Richter trace the relationships between the history of concepts on the Ideal City and the visuals arts, which quite often dedicate themselves explicitly to the ‚invisible cities'. Katarzyna Bittner gives an overview on development, shape and history of the city of Zamocs and Jan Maruhn and Carsten Schmidt critically explore the question whether Potsdam, the second venue, can also be referred to as an 'Ideal City'. In another contribution Jan Maruhn confronts the two 'classical' Ideal Cities of late Modernism, Chandigarh and Brasilia with the plannings of the Polish architect Oskar Hansen.