Joseph Beuys Empty Boxes as a Plastic Theme in the Work of Joseph Beuys

Many art collections have a small open box made from pinewood; it is marked inside, in Beuys’s own hand, with the word »Intuition« above two horizontal lines. It is signed and dated on the back. Around 12,000 examples of this seemingly unremarkable object were produced. In fact Beuys made each one of these multiples himself: » . . . I have to make these things myself, otherwise they’re nothing«. For both Beuys and his publisher Wolfgang Feelisch, founder of the vice-versand distribution company, the intuition box ultimately came out in the largest edition of anything either of them produced.

This exhibition provides an insight into the genesis of these multiples and their variants, as for example by artists such as Mauricio Kagel and Alfonso Hüppi. There will also be a focus on the »empty box« as a recurrent topic in the work of Joseph Beuys, from the »rubberized box« (1957) to the »sulphur-covered zinc box (plugged corner)« (1970) and the series of prints »wandering box« (1980). Beuys himself felt there was a connection between the empty box and the existential crisis he suffered in the mid-1950s.