A special addition to the documenta archive:

At the suggestion of a Düsseldorf antiquarian and gallery owner, Heinz Günter Mebusch (1952-2001) began a photographic portrait series in 1978, which he pursued with great consistency over many years. The title of the long-term project: "Journey to the Planet Ars".

Linked by the stylistic bracket of recurring parameters such as camera distance and centering, an extensive collection of artist portraits in black and white was created - a cross-section of the national and international art scene since the late 1970s.

Mebusch systematically had the en-face photographs signed by the artists depicted and added his own signature on the reverse by thumbprint.

In a self-penned text for an exhibition in 1985, Mebusch addresses in a humorously ironic way his personal distance to the "objects of investigation" of his "research trip to the planet Ars," i.e. to the art world and its protagonists: other photographers before him had followed the urge "to seek citizenship or at least asylum in the countries of Ars. Not so me. I was a stranger and wanted to remain one [...] because I wanted to concentrate in my work on the visual artists, wanted to juxtapose them, selected with the neutrality of the Martian, in order to answer for myself in the contemplation of their portraits the question: "What is art?"   

The purchase of an edition of 235 prints has made it possible to expand the Mebusch collection in the documenta archiv once again.