HOTEL MARIENBAD

August 2008

Embedded in the beautiful landmarked grounds of the KW with an atmosphere of glamorous history and lively presentday life, Hotel Marienbad provides a comfortable residence in the heart of the capital city. Our suite combines generosity with a passion for details. Fine materials, shapes and colors impart an individual and personal charm. The finest decor in harmony with ambience and service leaves nothing to be desired.

The KW Institute for Contemporary Art opened Hotel Marienbad on January 26, 2008 as a hotel suite in the front building to accommodate artists of all disciplines. The artists do not pay for the room, but instead provide a public event in the hotel:
exhibitions, performances, lectures or even concerts. Due to the specific framework of origination of the respective contributions, the resulting series of events includes unusual presentation forms and performance formats otherwise seldom seen in institutional contexts. For example, this allows for exhibitions that only last one day and presentation of works in progress. Hotel Marienbad provides a poetic space, which reveals a whole new world of options in contrast to the White Cube. The hotel can neither be clearly identified as a private nor as a public space and it serves as a functional location and an artistic platform at once.

The name Marienbad and the neon sign attached to the facade of the KW are the work of the Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. The title makes reference to locations in two movies, which have their place in film history: the Marienbad cinema in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "Berlin Alexanderplatz" and Alain Resnais' film "Last Year in Marienbad" - two places in film history and at the same time possible locations for a first encounter.
The hotel rooms are the artistic works of the first guests, the artist group Marienbad (Claudia Heidorn, Anna Jandt, Anneli Käsmayr, Jenny Kropp and Alberta Niemann). This young collective of artists from Hamburg and Bremen work at the interface between art and everyday life. Their works are constructed spaces, in which they weave real-life situations with a fictional world of signs and hints as tracks to be followed by the intrigued.

The second group of guests to house in the hotel suite in the front building of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art were the janitor couple Helga und Hartmut Rausch and students of the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Mr. and Mrs. Rausch brought images and objects from their collection, which currently comprises 400 works. In the many years that they have worked as janitors, students and professors have often given them drawings, paintings or objects. Mr. and Mrs. Rausch thus began collecting art and have a very special relationship to its treasures. During their stay at Hotel Marienbad, Helga and Hartmut Rausch presented a very personal selection of this collection, which was displayed for the first time at the Portikus in 2007. Students from the Städelschule accompanied them and created a program consisting of discussions, presentations, concerts and films. It included live music from country to pop to funk, art films by students and alumni and a talk between Thomas Bayrle, Daniel Birnbaum, Isabelle Graw, Simon Starling, Wolfgang Tillmans and students on the topic of "teaching art". Thus the Hotel Marienbad suite became both an exhibition site and a lab for young art students. Hartmut Rausch also constructed his legendary Golden Rausch Bar together with Städelschule students in the courtyard of KW.

The Scottish artist Savage (born in Glasgow in 1978) is currently gracing Hotel Marienbad with his presence (from July 6 to September 7, 2008) as its third guest. "Savage - You will have what you want sometime soon"
Safe deposit boxes are not unusual in hotels. They protect the riches of the revered guests from theft. But what happens if the safe is stolen and the guests themselves turn to thieves?

Lay partiality aside, and answer me: is theft, whose effect is to distribute wealth more evenly, to be branded as wrong in our day, under our government which aims at equality. Plainly the answer is no: it furthers equality and, what is more, renders more difficult the conservation of property. There was once a people who punished not the thief but him who allowed himself to be robbed, in order to teach him to care for his property. (Marquis de Sade)

We will gladly make reservations for you at any time: www.hotelmarienbad.com.

Sponsored by Dornbracht Culture Projects (www.cultureprojects.com) and the friends of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

Dornbracht joins the ranks of international art sponsors in providing both financial and staff support for exhibitions and projects around the world. Among other things Dornbracht provided support for the exhibition of the Italian media artist Fabrizio Plessi at the Guggenheim Museum in SoHo, New York in 1998, was a sponsor of the German pavilion at the Biennale in Venice in 1999 and 2001 arranged by Rosemarie Trockel and Gregor Schneider respectively, partnered with the White Cube Gallery in London for the exhibition series Antipodes curated by Louise Neri and last year provided support for the exhibition Into Me / Out of Me curated by Klaus Biesenbach, which was first shown at PS.1 in New York, then at KW in Berlin and finally at Macro in Rome.

Further information: Maike Cruse T: 030. 24 34 59 42 E-mail: presse@kw-berlin.de www.kw-berlin.de or via the Dornbracht Press Office: Meiré und Meiré, Stephanie Eckerskorn, Lichtstrasse 26-28, 50825 Köln, T: 0221 57770 416 or E-mail: s.eckerskorn@meireundmeire.de.
Your contact at Dornbracht headquarters: Holger Struck / Melanie Prüsch, Köbbingser Mühle 6, 58640 Iserlohn, T. 02371 433 119 / 2119, E-mail: hstruck@dornbracht.de / mpruesch@dornbracht.de.

Photos:
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
HOTEL MARIENBAD
Installation views

© Photos: Uwe Walter