Paul Kirps at Annexe22

The Luxembourgish artist Paul Kirps will display his exposition Module 3 – Section B from 10 July until 11 September. At Annexe22 in Esch’s “Brillplaz” artists from Luxembourg present their work and installations to local residents and visitors.

Researching, collecting, editing, and archiving are key elements of Paul Kirps’s work. Archiving in particular is an important step in the artist’s creative process. However, this does not take place at the end of the project or exhibition, as could be expected, but already at a much earlier stage. In fact, the artist’s studio is a giant archive, contained either in his digital atlas in the clouds, or more traditionally, in boxes. The practice of archiving helps the artist to structure his creative work. Moreover, it places Paul Kirps’s work within the contemporary discourse on the positioning and role of archives in the 21st century. The will to preserve, to keep traces, to safeguard and protect cultural heritage has existed ever since libraries were created. Today’s archives have expanded to the virtual space and have thus become, so to speak, omnipresent.

For Module 3 – Section B, Paul Kirps addresses this contemporary function of the archive by installing three panel trolleys in the Annexe22, while questioning at the same time the role and situation of the stored artworks. How are the objects kept when they are not being shown or circulated? Does the stored artwork lose its value? Significantly, it is in the present time, a time of waiting, preparation, uncertainty as to how and when a long-awaited recovery will take place, that the artist addresses the themes of archiving and storage. An installation in waiting, which does not know the fate of the artworks presented in the exhibition. It illustrates how, for Paul Kirps, an archive collection becomes a selection for artistic production.

About the artist

Paul Kirps (*1969 in Luxembourg), lives and works in Luxembourg.

Paul Kirps graduated in visual communication from ECAL in Lausanne (CH).

In 2005, he founded the Atelier Paul Kirps in Luxembourg. His work includes artistic interventions, exhibitions and personal projects. Paul Kirps is the first Luxembourg artist whose work has been included in the prestigious collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA). He is also present in the collections of the Musée d’art moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxembourg, the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, the Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg and the Ville de Luxembourg.