Dirk von Lowtzow

Detectives After dropping out of art history studies, Dirk von Lowtzow lands in Hamburg in 1993 and sees for the first time at the Hamburger Kunstverein what was then, as now, called "contemporary art" and did not exist in Freiburg. The exhibition was called "Backstage" ("I only knew that from punk clubs until then") and was conceived as a peek behind the scenes and simultaneously as an overview of "institutional critique" and "context art". Many of the positions shown corresponded with the nascent practice of Tocotronic. Five years later, he met Isabelle Graw in Köln, author and editor of "Texte zur Kunst", and after an evening at a bar, was hired as an art critic for the magazine. The essay collection gathers (almost) all contributions that Dirk von Lowtzow wrote for "Texte zur Kunst" and for catalogues in the years 1999-2019 – arranged chronologically. It begins with an exhibition visit to Sigmar Polke at the Hamburger Kunsthalle and ends with some (unanswered) questions for the writer Leïla Slimani. There's even a mini-drama included!