»I spin myself totally into the great box of wonders known as the world and then bring the large forms inside, into my very own box.« This is how the artist Walter Ophey 1921 described his painting and drawing in the first issue of the journal Das Junge Rheinland. What could he have meant by his »own box«? His head, the place where all perception based on the experience of feeling and thinking flows together? His paintbox? Or, a few years prior to the invention of the 35mm camera, his camera as a box?  Taking the world in, with outward expression as the result; this is what art is, in most instances. In general, one could say that art is a game that has taken form and has content. It is a game, because although it is happy to function without respect for predefined criteria, it sets out its own rules where appropriate. Art is form, because only through form can content be communicated. In order to take shape, it depends on material. This could by anything available to our senses: substances, language, sounds, movement, pictures…But that in no way means that we can define art only in terms of active work and »graspable« objects in the literal sense. »There is no art without laziness«, as Mladen Stilinovic wrote in his manifesto on laziness Even though he plays in his photo series Artist at Work – the title we have adopted for our exhibition – with the clichée of the poor poet, between hyperactivity and laziness there is a wide range of very different artistic working methods. This is precisely what the new presentation of our own collection is about, with a particular emphasis on the spatial effects of the architecture.

Art museum of the
Archdiocese of Cologne