Pre Post Vandalism – A History of Vandalism in Art and Culture

INTERCITY, the current exhibition at Walkmühle Wiesbaden, is dedicated to the cultural movement of post-vandalism. But what exactly is that, and what is the historical perspective? Should so-called vandalism always be viewed as something negative? Many people mistakenly consider art to be an additive process: a final work is created on a white canvas by successively applying paint. History shows that in many artistic processes, the moment of destruction is more important than creation from nothing.

In his lecture, Heiner Blum, Professor of Experimental Spatial Concepts at the HfG Offenbach, about the interplay between design and destruction with examples from the last 32,000 years, starting with the wall paintings in the Chauvet Cave, through the sacking of Rome by the Vandals, the Louvre as a ruin, to self-commissioned painting in public spaces and the Instagram account POST-VANDALISM @post_vandalism.

In recent years, an interplay between art and the street, high culture and subculture has given rise to a cultural movement that has been a major focus of Prof. Heiner Blum’s Experimental Spatial Concepts course at Offenbach University of Art and Design since 2016.

At its core is artistic research inspired by the surfaces of everyday life, self-commissioned illegal painting, and anonymous traces in urban zones, exploring a new field between the white cube and public space. Here, a young generation of artists is developing experimental strategies in all media between documentation and abstraction, construction and destruction.

In fact, this artistic perspective is part of a global movement with historical roots, which found a provisional name in 2019 via the Instagram account post_vandalism.

As early as 1974-75, artist John Divola had marked a new path here with his project Vandalism in the form of painterly interventions in vacant houses. Artists such as Ann Messner, Gordon Matta-Clark, Martin Barré, but also the abstract expressionist painters Janet Sobel, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler are essential pioneers of this movement.

In 2022, the Diamant / Museum Of Urban Culture, a place for street-level artistic research, presentation and communication, was created in the Offenbach pedestrian zone as part of the Experimental Spatial Concepts teaching area. In March 2023, art historian Larissa Kikol curated the exhibition Postvandalism here. At the same time, she published the standard work on the subject, Kunstforum Post-Vandalismus.

In cooperation with Heiner Blum, his students and Larissa Kikol, the Walkmühle is dedicating an exhibition and a publication to the topic of art in dialogue with the city in May and June, which will be published at the end of the project.

Artists
Alex2000 / Barbara Wonner / Christian Leicher / Daniel von Hoeßle / Dorian Winkler / Inaara Mariel / Jakob Francisco / Jasper Ideker / Jonas Berger / Joschua Arnaut / Konstantin Fürchtegott Kipfmüller / Lars Schwabe / Lenny Westend / Leonie Englert / Marc Goroncy / Marlon Hesse / Martin Stoya / Mathias Weinfurter / Max Brück / Mike Schäfer / Nico Joel Helbling / Noa Vetter / Philipp Langer / Pierre Verago / Rushy Diamond / Sonja Prochorow / Sonja Rychkova

Lecture HEINER BLUM »PRE POST VANDALISM«
4. Juni 2025, 20 Uhr

Finissage & Publikationsvorstellung
29. Juni 2025, 18 Uhr

Künstlerverein Walkmühle
Walkmühle 3, Wiesbaden