Simon Starling: Nacau/reconstruction

In Nachbau, the Turner Prize-winning artist Simon Starling delves into the presentation of art in shifting historical and architectural contexts. His starting point is the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, one of the first to specialize in Modern art, founded at the beginning of the last century. In 1937, some 1,400 works from its collection--including pieces by artists such as Matisse and CEzanne--were declared ""degenerate"" and locked away by the Nazi government. The museum itself was destroyed in 1944 and 1945, rebuilt after the war, and is now about to be partially demolished once again in the course of renovations. Working in the museum's confines, using four photographs of its galleries taken between 1929 and 1944 by Albert Renger-Patzsch, (a key photographer in the ""Neue Sachlichkeit,"" or ""New Objectivity""), Starling reconstructs that era's art placement and surroundings in a detailed, film set-like installation, bringing this charged historical background forward into the present. This two-volume artist's book on the project documents and elaborates on the installation and ideas it explores: the continuities, transformations and alterations that the artist shows shaping art and history. Simon Starling, born in Surrey in 1967, lives and works in Glasgow.