Our group exhibition at the beginning of the last year, "The very first", was a great success with the public and participating artists. Other than what the title might first suggest, the exhibition was not about the newest productions of the new year 2000, but about the origins of artistic production. We invited artists to own up to their "first" works – or at least one of their first works. This informative exhibition included many works on loan from the artists’ families or circles of friends. This also provided many surprises, including astonishing moments of recognition. It was especially interesting to see at what point each of the artists considered to have created his or her first work. At the time we had already devised a consequent plan for "The very last", which we did, however, keep secret. The invitation delivered to the artists on January 1, 2001 asked for the very last work of the past millennium. We wanted to capture the artistic investigation of this culturally loaded point in time like a snapshot. Similar to "The very first" we had been relying upon the artists for the interpretation of the subject as well as the definition of the works, and we were anxiously awaiting "The very last" by:

Anna Anders, Mercedes Barros, Elke Baulig, Anna und Bernhard Blume, Karl Bohrmann, Walter Dahn, Peter Dreher, Belu-Simion Fainaru, Gina Lee Felber, Jårg Geismar, Tina Haase, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Karin Hochstatter, Felix Stephan Huber, Bernd Jansen, Kalaman, Annebarbe Kau, Andreas M. Kaufmann, Juergen Klauke, Yasue Kodama, Thomas Locher, Shiro Matsui, membran, Mika Miura, Yves Netzhammer, Thomas Rentmeister, Tilo Riedel, Karin Sander, Volker Saul, Frances Scholz, Koji Sekimoto, Wolfgang Spanier, Sumi Maro, Guenter Umberg, Elisabeth Vary, Heike Weber, Ulrich Wellmann, Charles Worthen, Peter Zimmermann.