„It´s all very fluid, really.“ (Joseph Beuys)

Concept, action, music, language and science-based approaches instead of traditional panel painting and sculpture: the expanded concept of art of the intermedia Fluxus movement forms the basis of Joseph Beuys' expanded concept of art. From 1962, the Fluxus collective, as a supranational network, had dissolved every conventional form of academic and institutional consolidation and placed the recipients at the centre as free, self-determined, creative individuals. For Beuys, his early contact with the unorthodox intellectual group meant liberation from the ‘aesthetic straitjacket’, interdisciplinary communication and entry into the public, social and political sphere. 
 
The exhibition does not view Joseph Beuys as a solitary figure, as is so often the case, but places him in an open, collaborative context. In this context, artist colleagues such as Nam June Paik, Fluxus initiator George Maciunas and the Danish Fluxus Connection (Arthur Køpcke, Henning Christiansen) play a special role. Within a chronological structure, the project highlights the early formative years (1962-1964) and the time of the student movement, when the anti-authoritarian, emancipatory Fluxus impulse was reactivated in the environment of the Düsseldorf Art Academy by artists such as Robert Filliou and Dieter Roth. 

Curated by Susanne Rennert