Tetsumi Kudo: retrospective

Abstract

Bottled humanism, colored neon contaminations, tattered flaps of skin, and limp penises bring humanist self-assurance crashing to the ground. What appears as poison or chemical devastation is in fact an appeal to understand metamorphosis as a state of being. Over a period of three decades, from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s, the Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo created a consistent body of work that serves as a model for contemporary conceptual approaches of Posthumanism and the New Materialism. The catalogue brings together contributions by artists and theorists and documents Kudo's comprehensive oeuvre in work and archive images as well as exhibition views from the retrospective at the Fridericianum.

Contents

Bottled humanism / Susanne Pfeffer -- Bottled Humanism / Susanne Pfeffer -- Kudō Tetsumi and hist anti-art peers: visionary declarations in 1961 / Reiko Tomii -- Tetsumi Kudo und seine verbündeten in der anti-kunst-bewegung: visonäre statements in Jahr 1961 / Reiko Tomii -- Reproduction and procreation - Tetsumi Kudo's phallic displays / Antje Krause-Wahl -- Reproduktion und procreation - Tetsumi Kudos phallische displays / Antje Krause-Wahl -- Cultivation by radioactivity / Mike Kelley -- Kultivierung durch radioaktivität / Mike Kelley.