Slominski's "Residences versus Birthplaces" for the European Football Championship 2024

As part of the cultural programme for UEFA EURO 2024, Museum Folkwang is presenting the exhibition Andreas Slominski. Residences versus Birthplaces. Andreas Slominski (*1959) deals with diverse aspects of everyday life and everyday culture in his extensive artistic oeuvre. He has also repeatedly created artworks related to football.

Residences versus Birthplaces consists of 80 original football posters that Slominski collected between 1986 and 1988 from clubs in the former Federal Republic of Germany. Most of the posters are for matches from various top leagues, but there are also announcements for games in the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga as well as international matches. The group of works was triggered by an event that caused football fan Slominski to waver over the question of which team he should support. A poster announced the match between Altona 93 and SV Meppen on 26 August 1986. This meant that the team from his home town at the time would be playing against the club of his childhood. Slominski took this as an opportunity to put together a collection of football posters that would otherwise hardly have survived.

Residences versus Birthplaces is a unique portrayal of West German football culture in the 1980s. Many clubs now play in other leagues, sports facilities no longer exist or have different names, and companies that were sponsors at the time no longer exist. But continuity can also be observed. Almost all of the more than 100 clubs named on the posters still have a football team today. They are often based in smaller towns or communities. The local social roots of the clubs are reflected in the many adverts from companies and businesses, which take up more than half the space on some posters. Residences versus Birthplaces also offers a visual cross-section of a mostly anonymous, yet astonishingly diverse commercial design.

On the occasion of the exhibition at Museum Folkwang, Andreas Slominski also developed the concept for a monumental chalk drawing that would take up the entire pitch of the Rot-Weiss Essen stadium on Hafenstrasse. Over 140 sacks of sports field chalk would be required to realise the project. A study with a palette of sports field chalk stands in the exhibition as a representative of its possible future realisation. Slominski created another intervention for one of the Museum Folkwang's atriums. Here, the football goal (2024) presents itself to visitors as both a sculptural and functional object in a waiting position.

To accompany the exhibition, the artist has entered into a special collaboration with Museum Folkwang and the Essen-based artisan bakery Bäcker Peter. During the European Football Championship from 15 June to 14 July, the hand-shaped European Championship bread (2024) by Andreas Slominski, stamped with a football boot, will be available in the branches of Bäcker Peter in Essen and the surrounding area - to eat or collect.

The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue (€29.80), issued by the publishing house of the bookshop Walther und Franz König, were created in close collaboration with the artist.

Supported by the EURO 2024 Football & Culture Foundation