November 15, 2013
MKM Museum Küppersmühle for Modern Art

The “art submarine” entitled “I CAN, BECAUSE I WANT WHAT I MUST” is a cooperative project by the artist Andreas M. Kaufmann and the visual scientist and art historian Prof. Dr. Hans Ulrich Reck. In the fall of 2013, the artwork was installed in front of the MKM Museum Küppersmühle in Duisburg’s Inner Harbour as a new acquisition from the Ströher Collection and has been part of the MKM’s permanent collection as an “outpost” ever since. It was previously on display for the first time during the European Capital of Culture year RUHR.2010 on Lake Baldeney in Essen. On the occasion of the new presentation at the MKM, the submarine sculpture was completely restored and the approximately 8 m-long and 3.2 m-high picture collage in the interior was revised and redesigned by the artist/scientist duo.

For Andreas M. Kaufmann and Hans Ulrich Reck, the submarine is a symbol of visually encoded knowledge that is sometimes visible, but can also become invisible through potential submersion. It stands for warlike, political and media camouflage and deception as well as for invisible power and violence – the levels of interpretation here are manifold. The central concern of the artist/scientist duo is “to realize a politically iconographically reflected vision of a specific “cathedral of human-historically significant image-imagination” (…). The emphasis is on a description of the capabilities and limits of the pictorial medium.” (Andreas M. Kaufmann/Hans Ulrich Reck).