Stephen Willats:
Encountering Dreams and Realities, 2003
Photographic prints, laser prints, letraline on cardboard, VHS video tape
16 panels, different sizes

Stephen Willats (born in 1943, living in London) counts among the pioneers of conceptual art.

During the sixties, he fundamentally called in question the object-oriented approach to art and hence also the institutional context of art. Ever since then Stephen Willats has been developing and implementing participatory art projects aimed at motivating people to register and formulate their own perceptions and thereby create their own living environments.

The exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Siegen constitutes the hitherto largest overview of the work of Stephen Willats, beginning with his early phenomenological observations, his manifestos on the rôle of the artist and his first cybernetic experiments and then following the development of his playful and communicative strategies in both his small-scale serial works and his large-scale projects over a period of more than four decades.

Date: 21 September 2006 - 14 January 2007

Venue: Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Unteres Schloss 1, 57072 Siegen