Art Unlimited
Launched in 2000, Art Unlimited is Art Basel's pioneering exhibition platform for projects that transcend the classical
art-show stand - including video projections, large-scale installations, massive sculptures and live performances. Selected by the Art Basel Committee, it has been curated since
its inception by Geneva curator Simon Lamunière. (Hall 1)
Index Art 41 Basel, Art Unlimited
A
Doug Aitken, 303 Gallery | New York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber | Zürich; Regen Projects | Los Angeles; Victoria Miro | London
Kader Attia, Galerie Krinzinger | Wien; Galerie Christian Nagel | Köln
B
Rosa Barba, carlier gebauer | Berlin, Gió Marconi Gallery | Milano
Massimo Bartolini, Massimo De Carlo | Milano;
Maggazino | Roma; Frith Street Gallery | London
Michael Beutler, Galerie Christian Nagel | Köln;
Galerie Bärbel Grässlin | Frankfurt am Main;
Pierre Bismuth, Team Gallery | New York
C
Miriam Cahn, Meyer Riegger | Karlsruhe; Galerie Jocelyn Wolff | Paris
Bruce Conner, Michael Kohn Gallery | Los Angeles
D
Andrew Dadson, Galleria Franco Noero | Torino
Guy de Cointet, Air de Paris | Paris; Greene Naftali | New York
Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Dépendance | Bruxelles;
Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi | Berlin
Liz Deschenes, Miguel Abreu Gallery | New York
E
Latifa Echakhch, Kamel Mennour | Paris
F
Harun Farocki, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac | Paris
Urs Fischer, Galerie Eva Presenhuber | Zürich
Dan Flavin, David Zwirner | New York
Alicia Framis, Galeria Helga de Alvear | Madrid,
Annet Gelink Gallery | Amsterdam
Yona Friedman, Kamel Mennour | Paris
G
Ryan Gander, Lisson Gallery | London; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery | New York; Annet Gelink Gallery | Amsterdam
Dora Garcia, ProjecteSD | Barcelona; Ellen de Bruijne Projects | Amsterdam
Mario Garcia Torres, Taka Ishii Gallery | Tokyo; Galerie Jan Mot | Bruxelles; Proyectos Monclova | México City; White Cube | London
Aloïs Godinat, Galerie Francesca Pia | Zürich
Johan Grimonprez, Kamel Mennour | Paris; Sean Kelly Gallery I New York
H
Lothar Hempel, Anton Kern Gallery | New York;
Stuart Shave / Modern Art | London
Susan Hiller, Timothy Taylor Gallery | London
K
Yayoi Kusama, Gagosian Gallery | New York
M
David Maljkovic, Annet Gelink Gallery | Amsterdam;
Metro Pictures | New York; Georg Kargl Fine Arts | Wien,
Sprüth Magers Berlin London | Berlin
Christian Marclay, White Cube | London
Kenneth Martin, Annely Juda Fine Art | London
Mario Merz, Konrad Fischer Galerie | Düsseldorf
Haroon Mirza, Lisson Gallery | London
Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff | Paris
N
Rivane Neuenschwander and Cao Guimarães, Fortes Vilaça | São Paulo; Stephen Friedman Gallery | London,
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery | New York
P
Otto Piene, Galerie Löhrl | Mönchengladbach
Jack Pierson, Galleria Christian Stein | Milano
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Galleria Continua | San Gimignano (Siena)
Sigmar Polke, Michael Werner Gallery | New York
Elodie Pong, Freymond-Guth & Co, Fine Arts | Zürich
Sergio Prego, Galeria Soledad Lorenzo | Madrid
R
Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Galleria Raucci / Santamaria | Napoli; Galerie Eva Presenhuber | Zürich
Ugo Rondinone, Gladstone Gallery | New York
Eva Rothschild, Galerie Eva Presenhuber | Zürich
Glen Rubsamen, Mai 36 Galerie | Zürich;
Annemarie Verna Galerie | Zürich; Alfonso Artiaco | Napoli
S
Yuko Shiraishi, Annely Juda Fine Art | London;
Galerie Gisèle Linder | Basel
Florian Slotawa, Sies + Höke | Düsseldorf; Galerie Nordenhake | Berlin
Nancy Spero, Galerie Lelong, Paris | Anthony Reynolds Gallery | London; Christine König Galerie | Wien
Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, Stampa | Basel
John Stezaker, Galerie Gisela Capitain | Köln
SUPERFLEX, Peter Blum Gallery | New York, Nils Staerk | Copenhagen
T
Jan Tichy, Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago
V
Marijke van Warmerdam, Galleri Riis | Oslo;
Annet Gelink Gallery | Amsterdam
Agnès Varda, Galerie Nathalie Obadia | Paris
Bill Viola, James Cohan Gallery | New York
W
Ian Wilson, Galerie Jan Mot | Bruxelles, Galleria Massimo Minini | Brescia
Y
Haegue Yang, Kukje Gallery | Seoul
Z
Zhang Huan, The Pace Gallery | New York; White Cube | London; Blum & Poe | Los Angeles
DOUG AITKEN
Frontier, 2009
Frontier was conceived by Doug Aitken as a radical new work that examines our culture at a critical point of explosive change. A meditation on how a massive shift can occur at both an individual and cultural scale, in this film we find ourselves at a moment where pressure and opposition reveal a new frontier: a fast trajectory yet fragmented journey through our distinctly modern existence. Frontier is projected on the interior of a large glowing rectangular structure specifically designed to display the film. Through the openings in its surface, we catch glimpses of the provocative and surreal new world within. The central character of the film, played by iconic artist Ed Ruscha, moves through the world around him as if he were a passenger of a series of slowly accelerating episodes. As the film progresses towards its apex, the imagery and sounds gradually become more surreal and hallucinatory: the highly choreographed musical composition – taken from the sounds of the city itself – creates a new urban soundscape that envelops the viewer.
KADER ATTIA
Couscous Kaaba, 2009/10
A two-dimensional black cube forms the negative center of a huge circle of couscous. The cube stands for the Kaaba – known more for its religious function than for its pure design, it is one of the most recognizable icons of Arab culture. It is often referred to, however, as a very early example of modern aesthetics, as well as of the non-figurative representation of the world in Islam. Contrary to the Greek Christian Church of the 8th Century, Islam and Judaism shared the thought that icons should not be venerated as incarnations of God. Islam created its 'modernity' by denying the representability of saints in images. As a French-Algerian artist, Kader Attia aims at showing the hybridity of his culture, between Orient and Occident. In other works, he targets the reappropriation of this culture – i.e., from Arab vernacular architecture to the aesthetics of African masks – by making that culture's own thoughts present instead of projections thereof, and understands his work as 'the echo that sounds between politics and poetry.'
ROSA BARBA
The Long Road, 2010
The Long Road was filmed in Utah and pursues Rosa Barba's previous investigations of the undercurrents of textual and visual narrations; here, in particular, in relation to deserted areas of the North American countryside, its wastelands of civilization. Historical traces of the recent past, markers of past actions, open up the discordances of naturalized environments. The Long Road delineates its hidden tracks in the constant ambiguities of the landscape's functional and aesthetic perceptions, in constructing a narration of discordance: involuntarily, fragments of late modern art histories come to the fore, not appearing as monumental sites of the past but as revenants of an ever-present and engaging past. The Long Road scrutinizes a huge provisional racetrack, which was in working use for only for a few weeks before it was deserted forever. The film is shot on 35mm from an aerial view. The camera slowly circles the racetrack, providing a guided gaze that turns the track into a monumental earthwork. The rupture between past and future is accompanied by a twofold soundtrack with music by Jan St. Werner and a spoken text by Robert Creeley.
MASSIMO BARTOLINI
Organi, 2007/08
This work takes the form of a pipe organ made primarily from scaffolding poles like those covering the façades of buildings under construction. This organ has no keyboard, and instead the device that plays the music is the same as that of a music box. The music played is a variation on the first three bars of Cheap Imitation by John Cage.
MICHAEL BEUTLER
Pipeline Field, 2010
'The Pipeline Field resembles one I found on a lazy day, cycling around Rotterdam harbor on a gray Sunday afternoon. Nobody was there with the pipes. No sounds were coming from the factory halls, no fences kept out visitors. So I entered this geometric pipe 'nest,' which looked almost too minimal to be real. Of course, there were no fences around this place: who could ever carry away one of those giants? With the weight came the quietness of the place. It was difficult to tell if production would start again the day after. A local told me some years later that those pipes are still there; they’re destined to become oil pipelines in Russia. The work of the Pipeline Field will have stopped as well, by the time of the opening. But traces of 'work' will be found inside. Three contraptions, each of the size of a grand piano, are standing in loose order with fresh pipes still attached to their mangles. All the contraptions are operated by hand power, not electricity. Two people are needed to run one device: one acts as the engine, the other guides the paper into the system. It's a quasi-adaptation from the industrial making of ventilation tunnels. A band sheet of metal is spiraled round and round and re-attached to itself, creating a tight origami-like seam. The product is not used for anything. It is just taken off the machines and piled up next to them until a certain moment of balance of space, work, and product is reached.' (Michael Beutler)
PIERRE BISMUTH
Flip Side of the Same, 2010
The installation Flip Side of the Same by Pierre Bismuth playfully inverses the roles of gallery and artist. That is, with this work, the gallery is represented by the artist. A slightly smaller scale replica of the booth of Team Gallery, as it is found at the Art 41 Basel art fair is installed as a large sculpture in the Art Unlimited space. Twisted details dramatize the works to be seen in this simulated art booth, here infused with Bismuth's fictional suggestions.
MIRIAM CAHN
Das wilde Lieben, 1984
THE WILD LOVING womens-spaces (état de guerre) 1984
(746) one-room installation with 6 elements
between 36 and 38 running meters 4.00 m high
1. the wild loving frieze chalk on paper 21.00 x 3.80 m
2. the wild loving frieze chalk on paper 9.00 x 3.00 m
3. the wild loving single sheet chalk on paper 2.40 x 1.40 m
4. the wild loving booklet chalk on paper 1.60 x 1.00 m (open)
5. fake weapons missiles female weapons 31 plasticine sculptures 4.50 x 2.00 m (about)
6. female weapons missiles fake weapons b/w video/monitor
no.1: can also be installed as frieze around the corner, bed above
no.2: single wall (not to be installed around the corner), house above
no.3: single sheet to be hung in a 'classical' way
no.4: open on the floor 'somewhere' in the room
no.5: to be laid on the floor on the base of one or the other frieze
no.6: simple monitor 'somewhere' in the room, maybe on a white socle
BRUCE CONNER
THREE SCREEN RAY, 2006
Before music videos and rapid-fire editing pervaded popular culture, seminalavant-garde filmmaker Bruce Conner (1933 - 2008) pioneered techniques of vertical montage and subliminal messaging with his second film, COSMIC RAY (1961). With thousands of images precisely cut to Ray Charles's hit song What'd I Say (1959), Conner created an explosive homage for the blind musician. More than 40 years later, a derivative work was born from COSMIC RAY and the silent loop installation EVE-RAY-FOREVER (1965/2006). THREE SCREEN RAY (2006), re-edited and expanded, replaces its predecessors with three new iterations that share the screen. In collaboration with editor Michelle Silva, Conner created the visual equivalent of a cinematic slot machine; images meet, diverge, and meet again. Conner reveals a common sexual subtext among desperate images to confront consumerism and aggression, while his tour-de-force editing ensures that even after multiple viewings, the viewer will never experience THREE SCREEN RAY the same way twice.
LIZ DESCHENES
Tilt/Swing (360° Field of Vision, Version 2), 2010
By arranging six large, camera-less photograms within the loose configurationof a shallow portal, Deschenes materializes Herbert Bayer's diagram of 360° field of vision from 1935. Bayer's ring, composed of rectangular forms, construes an 'inclusive picture of all (viewpoint) possibilities.' (Herbert L. Bayer, 'funda - mentals of exhibition design,' in PM: An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, And Their Associates, vol. 6, no. 6, December 1939/ January 1940, p. 22 [original work published in 1937]) Deschenes fills Bayer's empty panels with empty photographs – photograms evacuated of all representational content. By exposing photosensitive paper to the darkness of night and bringing the sheets back indoors before sunrise to fix them with silver toner, she produces a range of slightly reflective sheens. The photogram circumvents the responsibility of figurative depiction in favor of temporal record. The photographic moment has passed, but the possibility for another image begins or continues. Detecting our own cloudy features, outof- focus and incomplete, we are fleetingly reflected on the work's slippery surfaces. During the exhibition, atmospheric circumstances slightly oxidize the photograms' surfaces, which will, in turn, manifest a third, time-based material operation.
LATIFA ECHAKHCH
À chaque stencil une révolution/For Each Stencil a Revolution, 2007 - 2010
By lining the walls with thousands of sheets of carbon paper, Latifa Echakhch creates an immersive dark blue environment. The title of this work, For Each Stencil a Revolution, or À chaque stencil une révolution, is a quotation from Yasser Arafat commenting on the proliferation of political demonstrations in the late 60s when carbon paper was used to print multiple copies of revolutionary statements and images. Echakhch's use of this archaic material, which has become almost redundant in an age of cheap photocopiers and laser printing, casts a melancholy light on the legacy of 1968, now some forty years in the past. There is also a performative element to the work, as Echakhch splashes paint thinning solvents against the paper so that the blue seeps down, gathering in pools at the bottom of the walls. An allusion to the performances and deep blue of Yves Klein, the resulting streaks are also reminiscent of the surface of a Color Field painting, drawing attention to the sometimes tenuous links between the political claims of abstract art and the radical politics of the 1950s and 1960s.
HARUN FAROCKI
Comparison via a Third, 2007
‘Vergleich über ein Drittes examines the concept of work, as reflected in the example of the manufacture of bricks. The film shows various working procedures of both newly industrializing and highly industrialized societies, as well as that of the traditional handworker. Footage of brick manufacturing in Mumbai, Nimbut, and Pune, as well as images shot in industrialized Europe are projected side by side. After the initial presentation of increasingly automated manufacturing processes, the subsequent work steps in the various locations and societies are related to one another in a series of different constellations.' (Matthias Michalka, www.farocki-film.de)
URS FISCHER
Ix/Miss Satin/Zizi/Marguerite de Ponty/David, the Proprietor, 2006 - 2008
Urs Fischer's aluminum sculptures are cast from small hand-molded clays. While four of them stand solidly on the ground, one hangs precariously from the ceiling as if hovering weightlessly in space. Enlarged from hand-sized to positively monumental, each sculpture is only partially legible in that there are only a few clues that give the spectator an idea from where it derives. With a good dose of irony, Urs Fischer exaggerates the myth of the artist’s hand in the process of creation. At the same time, he questions the significance – or even relevance – of increasingly popular oversized artworks.
DAN FLAVIN
three sets of tangented arcs in daylight and cool white (to Jenny and Ira Licht), 1969
Dan Flavin’s three sets of tangented arcs in daylight and cool white (to Jenny and Ira Licht) was first (and last) shown as a site-related work for his first retrospective exhibition, held in 1969 in Ottawa at the National Gallery of Canada. Significantly, it was one of the few times the artist employed the use of curves rather than vertical and horizontal configurations. For this rare work, which makes use of the entire length and height of the exhibition space, two-foot fixtures were aligned end to end to form each arc, spanning and bisecting the walls and floor. Similar to Flavin’s 'barriers,' the installation disrupts the architecture of the space and bars the viewer from entering the gallery. The tonal contrast achieved through the use of fluorescent lights (alternating from daylight to cool white) establishes a formal aspect of the work while optically redefining the architectural constructs. Here, Flavin’s subtle use of the slight variations of white yields a manipulation of space, where art can merge with architecture. In keeping with Flavin's practice of dedicating individual works to friends, family or historical figures, the dedication of this work is to Ira Licht, an art historian and friend of the artist, and his wife Jennifer (Jenny), who at the time was an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The Estate of Dan Flavin is represented by David Zwirner.
ALICIA FRAMIS
Lost Astronaut, 2009
Alicia Framis's Lost Astronaut project started during Performa 09 in New York. In this performance-installation, Framis attempts to open a speculative discussion about traveling to and living on the moon, and what role women take on in this mighty endeavor. She looks at the possible evolution of architecture and (interior) design necessary for a permanent stay on the moon. Left on earth, like all women who were never really part of the race for the moon, over the course of recent years, Framis has taken on the task of changing life and behavior in space. She did so by launching her lunar mission, a New Moon Society. Her performances in New York, as her alter ego dressed in a vintage spacesuit, were scripted by a large group of artists and writers. Framis wandered off in the city in her spacesuit to claim women's presence on the moon. During Art Unlimited, Framis shows a reconstruction of the Lost Astronaut base camp on Wooster Street in New York as well as a film.
YONA FRIEDMAN
Ville spatiale (Space-chain structure), 2010
Fundamentally convinced that the universe, and consequently human nature, is unpredictable and uncontrollable, the writings and working models of Yona Friedman show that the ideal form in architecture is the very absence of planning, of right angles, of standardization, of logic: an intrinsically capricious nature must be answered by free, erratic, entangled, and recycled forms. The notion of authorship, therefore, becomes redundant and illusory; instead, Friedman encourages an organic, growing, and improvised architecture, modeled on the future user, who is ultimately given the title of author and creator. While working on the competition for Tunis in 1959, Friedman thought of using circles instead of polygons to delimit the polyhedrons that determine the spaceframe grid. The resulting form, called a Space-chain structure, has a number of structural advantages. All the joints in the space-chain are situated at points where the rings are tangential to one another. Another characteristic of the space-chains is that a circle can be defined as a polygon with one infinite side. Space-chain structures apply interesting cases of transition between adjacent polyhedrons. For example, the same circle can be considered either as a quadrangle when viewed as the face of a cube, or as a triangle when viewed as the face of a tetrahedron. This allows the geometric pattern to change at any interface in the space-chain.
RYAN GANDER
As It Presents Itself – Somewhere Vague, 2008
The stop motion 'claymation' of Ryan Gander's As It Presents Itself brings together a seemingly random lot of characters: the comedian Spike Milligan, curator Matthew Higgs, Mrs Frances Gander (the mother of the artist), the Lumière Brothers (Auguste and Louis, who were amongst the earliest of filmmakers), and a generic animator's armature that acts as the bare bones skeleton of the other characters. They seem to be auditioning for a piano piece, but appear nervous and unsure of themselves and their reasons for being on stage. Richard Briers narrates from the perspective of the characters involved, but in hindsight – interrogating the intentions of the work. He seems to be in dialogue with a partner (the artist's voice) that has been censored out. His rambling voiceover mirrors our own uncertainty as spectators. The characters too seem to be in search of meaning, lost in a loop of stunted action and fill-in-the-blanks narration. Produced with Wonky Animations and Picture This, Bristol, United Kingdom
DORA GARCÍA
Men I Love, 2009
Men I Love is conceived as a singular work, complexly composed of smaller, finite pieces that emerge, in the artist's words, 'as a reaction, homage, comment or continuation to the work of a number of male authors.' Robert Altman, J.G. Ballard, Bertolt Brecht, Lenny Bruce, Geoffrey Carey, Charles Filch, Peter Handke, Abbie Hoffman, William Holden, Wolfgang Huber, Andy Kaufman, Daniil Kharms, and Martin Kippenberger make up list of film makers, stand-up comedians, political activists, actors, poets, writers, playwrights, and artists; all of them men who, according to García, share the condition of being great conceptual artists and bear certain traits of the antihero, which should be understood as a protagonist who lives according to his own moral compass, who makes efforts to define and construct his own values as opposed to those accepted by the society he lives in. Each of the pieces in the Men I Love fit the definition given by Dan Graham as 'concept as anarchist humor,' to which García adds: 'concept as anarchist humor, comedy as truth, character as work, parody as homage, falsification as interpretation, nothing as something, stealing as collecting, disappearance as dignified exit.'
MARIO GARCIA TORRES
Unspoken Dailies, 2003 - 2009
Unspoken Dailies is based on a conference essay written by the artist several years before it was adapted into a film script about time, the unsaid, and the forgotten. Shot in real time, the 66-minute film features actor Diego Luna reading the script to himself for the first time as the camera rolled. Nothing is said, but much is revealed in the film that becomes both a long screen test for the actor and an audio portrait of Mexico City (where it was shot by cinematographer Alexis Zabé with an original score by Alejandro Rosso).
ALOÏS GODINAT
Déchirures, 2010
During the opening of Art Unlimited, one might notice strange remnants of posters on the walls. What one is witnessing is the artist Aloïs Godinat plastering throughout the hall various torn exhibition posters, which the artist has acquired from different institutions. The action of tearing and putting up the posters at the opening only gains full meaning within the specific context of Art Basel. Referencing famous artists and their exhibition history mirrors the mechanism of a big art fair. Godinat therefore plays with the expectations of the art-viewing public. The artist's action adopts the semblance of a guerrilla strategy, a forbidden placarding which can also be understood as a commentary on the increasing commercialization of artists via the media. At the same time, the action signifies an almost ephemeral artistic gesture that seeks to shun any form of heroism. As with his other works, Déchirures experiments with the most minimal possibilities of artistic creation.
JOHAN GRIMONPREZ
BED, 2005/2010
'A man blind in his right eye was hospitalized yesterday. A lost cauliflower seed had germinated behind his eyeball, and a 2 cm colli was surgically removed. He now sees again.' (Quoted from a true story by Louis-Paul Boon)
LOTHAR HEMPEL
ABC, 2007/2010
ABC is one of the three free-standing photographic cut-outs created for Lothar Hempel’s mid-career retrospective in 2007 entitled Alphabet City. The five female dancers, larger-than-life and quite monumental, seem to confront the viewer with a direct, forward-moving motion. But this sculpture operates within a floating spatial and temporal zone, and 'gives rise,' the artist once said, 'to something like a backward turned advertisement.' Each panel is propped up by a simple support, like the low-budget backdrops of a theater made light and easy for a quick change of scene. The light bulbs in the middle section of each board make further reference the building blocks of basic stage semantics: what's out front (advertising, propaganda, posters in front of the theater) has been brought to what’s out back (a setting to create an illusion), all at once, a confusion of the semiotics of imagery.
SUSAN HILLER
The Last Silent Movie, 2007/08
In The Last Silent Movie (2007/08) Hiller explores languages that are extinct or in the process of dying out. We hear voices articulating words in these rare languages, against a black screen. They sing, tell stories or recite vocabulary lists. Others charge the listeners, directly or metaphorically, with the injustice of their extinction. A choreography of sound documents, the film uncannily releases spirits of the past. In Hiller's own words, the work 'opens the unvisited, silent archives of extinct and endangered languages to create a composition of voices that are not silent. They are not silent because someone is listening.' In The Last Silent Movie, Hiller revisits a forgotten treasure trove of experience, preserved in oral tradition. At the same time, she interrogates historical Euro - centric concepts of civilization, modernity, and dominant culture. Her archive of linguistic rhythms, sounds, and melodies bears witness to the transformation and multiplicity of parallel semantic systems while simultaneously adverting to their transience.
YAYOI KUSAMA
Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity, 2008
In 1965, Yayoi Kusama made her first mirrored room and called it Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli's Field. In an effort to find ever new ways to visualize infinity within a closed environment, since then she has produced increasingly sophisticated structures incorporating recent technological developments. Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity (2008) is the most recent of Kusama's mesmerizing 'infinity rooms.' Upon stepping into a darkened room, a delicate, shimmering mirage unfolds around the viewer in the form of a myriad of gleaming lights that reproduce and reflect endlessly upon each other. The operating system is a combination of simple yet ingenious optical devices: the walls and ceiling of the room are mirrored in a floor of shallow water, while the lighting system increases and diminishes on a timed sequence at 90-second intervals. If eternity has been obliterated here, the aftermath would seem to be a dizzyingly aesthetic experience.
DAVID MALJKOVIC
Out of Projection, 2009
David Maljkovic´'s new installation expands on his continuing exploration of memories as futurist propositions, while making reference to disparate film genres such as science fiction and documentary. Out of Projection was filmed at the carefully guarded test track of the Peugeot headquarters in Sochaux, France. The primary screen shows the protagonists, elderly couples who build ideas for future projects. They are actual retired company workers who act as a medium between past and future, moving slowly around the test track alongside the car prototypes. The second, smaller projection is of close-up interviews with individual workers in silent recollection, eerily blurring the past and the future. The use of Peugeot prototypes as props follows the artist's use of futuristic automobile prototypes in Croatian Modernist architectural settings, such as in his past video works These Days and Lost Memories from These Days.
CHRISTIAN MARCLAY
Solo, 2008
Christian Marclay's video Solo is both a musical composition and a singlechannel video that continues the artist’s investigation into the relationships between performance, image, and sound. Marclay directed the actress Tree Carr to elicit sounds from an electric guitar. She begins by playing with the guitar in an innocent way, touching the strings to see what kind of sounds her contact with the instrument might produce. Gentle and tentative at first, she then improvises with greater confidence and intensity, plucking, stroking and scraping the strings of the guitar, handling its body sexually and forcefully. Through this process, Marclay compares the rhythms of a sex act to the structure of a piece of music. The resulting sounds, from delicate pings to loud distortions and feedback, is reminiscent of the experiments of Fred Frith and Keith Row, where the guitar is placed on a tabletop and played with paper, drum sticks, egg beaters, string, chains, and other found objects. This new video deepens Marclay’s exploration of the tropes of the rock guitar and its anthropomorphic associations. In works such as Prosthesis (2000), a silicone cast of a bass guitar, or Guitar Drag (2000), in which an electric guitar is dragged behind a truck, Marclay looks at the expressive and conceptual ramifications of this ubiquitous cultural icon.
KENNETH MARTIN
Screw Mobile, 1981/82
Kenneth Martin was one of the major artists of British Constructivist Art. He came to Abstraction in the late 1940s after working as a designer and painting naturalistic pictures for two decades. He started making Screw Mobile sculptures in the early 1950s and continued making them until his death in 1984. With them, Martin investigated the dynamics of movement and the contrast between stillness and the changes caused by the functions of twist and rotation. This Screw Mobile is the largest one he ever made and was originally a commission for the Queensgate Shopping Centre in Peterborough, UK, in 1982. The large sculpture – almost 9 meters high, including the extension pole – slowly turns to create shadows.
MARIO MERZ
Pythagoras' Haus, 1994
Mario Merz ranks among the most celebrated Arte Povera artists from Italy, and his works have been shown with the Konrad Fischer Galerie since 1970. Pythagoras' Haus (Pythagoras's House) is a glass and steel construction shaped like an igloo, partly covered with slate and marble plates fixed with clamps and decorated with brushwood and (his ever favorite) Fibonacci numbers in neon. In general, the igloos, which Merz began constructing in 1968 within the context of the student demonstrations in Italy and France, are perhaps the best-known and most typical works within the oeuvre of the artist.
HAROON MIRZA
An_Infinato, 2009
The installation is a three-piece ensemble including a 16mm film by Guy Sherwin and video footage by Jeremy Deller appropriated and combined with an assemblage to form a disparate yet lucid set of organized sounds. The title, An_Infinato, alludes to a perpetual musical composition or passage such as a canon whose end leads back to its beginning. A metal dustbin sits slightly raised off the ground with a circular light triggered by the 16mm film flashing as if imitating it. A Casio keyboard lies on top with its inner circuitry exposed to dangle freely into the bin. Inside there is water and a pump splashing the circuit in sequence to the other elements. The splashes cause the exposed notes of the keyboard to be played. Like the bin, the audio from Jeremy Deller's bat footage is also activated by Sherwin's film resulting in a synchronized or orchestra of sound and visual display. Due to the nature of the material in the installation, the work is to a certain degree self-governing. The chaotic properties of water combined with the varying loops mean that the work is slightly different every time it is experienced.
FRÉDÉRIC MOSER & PHILIPPE SCHWINGER
Capitulation Project, 2003
The terror and the irrational dynamics of war challenge representation, and the My Lai Massacre, which took place in Vietnam in March of 1968, is a case in point. In 1971, this massacre was 're-staged' in New York by the Performance Group. Instead of addressing the inconceivable terror with theatrical coherence, the public was invited to interact on stage in order to create unforeseen scenarios. Following historic documents that recall this legendary theater event, Moser and Schwinger recreated the original stage design from 1971 and reenacted the play, but with a rewritten script employing a different methodology: in their staging – performed for a 16mm film production – the usually dissociated perspectives of victims, offenders, witnesses, and commentators meet their ability to coexist as theatrical representations. Capitulation Project is Moser and Schwinger's reaction to the Iraq War II and supports Jacques Rancière’s proposal that fiction does not oppose the real, but that 'the real must be fictionalized in order to be thought.' In their films, the Swiss artist duo uses fiction as an instrument to appropriate the real and to contribute to its public reflection and debate.
RIVANE NEUENSCHWANDER AND CAO GUIMARÃES
The Tenant, 2010
The Tenant depicts the trajectory of a soap bubble floating throughout the empty rooms of a house under renovation. In a permanent state of suspension, never bursting or dying, it drifts from one room to the next, investigating empty corners and battered walls. All windows are closed, and there is no way out: even the house itself feels itself like a bubble. As the surroundings are reflected on the liquid surface, this non-human character seems at once to be an observer and to be observed, mirroring the camera once in a while and imposing a psychological aspect to the narrative. The subtle variation of light marks the passage of time. Rivane Neuenschwander and Cao Guimarães's most recent film makes references to Roman Polanski's film Le locataire (1976) and other indoor dramas from the 1970s, such as Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972) and Luchino Visconti's Conversation Piece (1974). The soundtrack, by Neuenschwander's long-time collaborators O Grivo, is composed of sounds from an ordinary family home, ‘dried out,’ so to say, to create a minimal effect.
OTTO PIENE
Lightroom, 1961 - 1981
Beginning in 1959, Otto Piene created his Lightrooms and Lightballets during the years of the ZERO movement in Düsseldorf. He works with natural and artificial light as an artistic medium in performance, environmental installations, and exhibitions of sculpture. Light, emitted from kinetic objects and perforated walls and ceilings, turns into animated dancing forms that slowly, softly, wander across the room surfaces.
JACK PIERSON
Romance, 2009
Romance was created in 2009 for Jack Pierson's first exhibition at Christian Stein in Milan. At the center of the space the word 'romance' unfolds like the fallen columns of an ancient ruin. The letters are made of iron, studded with scores of light bulbs, and evoke ambiances dear to modern artists: the circus, the venues of night life or perhaps the great gambling palaces of Las Vegas. At first glance amusing, playful, and dreamy, Pierson's work is nonetheless imbued with the melancholy of the sublime, and the very idea that happiness, fortune, and love are short-lived. The word 'romance' has many nuances. It expresses the sentimental and emotional aspects of Romanticism, while at the same time the fleeting intensity of a brief affair, a summer romance. The theme of love – be it platonic Eros, romantic love or unleashed sexuality – takes on a central role in Pierson's work. Love is fragile and implies an end, with ecstasy comes the void.
MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO
Labirinto e Grande Pozzo, 1969/2008
'A winding and unforeseeable road that leads us to the place of revelation, of knowledge.' It is with these words that Michelangelo Pistoletto describes the meaning of the Labyrinth, made of a variable length of corrugated cardboard. Its middle is punctuated by the Large Well, a work belonging to the series Minus Objects, conceived by Pistoletto between 1965 and 1966. The Labyrinth – as Pistoletto himself explains – is one of displacement, bewilderment, and fear and, therefore, the mirror at the end of the path becomes the 'screen of mental meditation, in between persistent poles such as fear and security, disorientation and the finding of ourselves, doubt and certainty, a blind alley and an open road.' The mirror is a sort of filter against the banality of existence: in it, we see our reflected image 'purified by any deformity that might lodge in our soul;’ it opens up the way out of the Labyrinth.
SIGMAR POLKE
Laterna Magica, 1990
Sigmar Polke's Laterna Magica is a major work in the artist's multifarious oeuvre, embodying the most important concerns of his practice. The series of paintings – widely exhibited over the past twenty years – is based on the magic lantern, a seventeenth century invention that anticipated modern projectors and motion pictures. Painted on both sides and installed in a folding screen-like frame, Laterna Magica questions not only traditional pictorial space and perspective, but also the physical and temporal experience of painting as well. Laterna Magica comes from a period of intense experimentation by the artist with translucent fabrics and materials in painting. Polke's interest in mirrors, doubles, transparency, and the elusive meaning of images, both abstract and real, are all explored in depth in this series.
ELODIE PONG
After the Empire, 2008
Elodie Pong's works explore the complexity of human relationships, the function and validity of cultural codes and references, and other social phenomena in contemporary society. 'We are knights on the trajectories of a post-everything era,' she says. Her work can be seen as a multi-layered analysis of how to inscribe oneself into today's hybrid reality, devoid of fixed structures and identities. Her visual language is precise, unfolding through metaphors rather than linear narration. In her video work After the Empire, Elodie Pong orchestrates conversations between various Iate icons of pop culture and political history, including Marilyn Monroe, Karl Marx, and Minnie Mouse. Surrounded by a post-apocalyptic set, the characters embody individual and symbolic extremes, longings, and ideals in humorous and elegiac ways.
SERGIO PREGO
Ikurriña Quarter, 2010
The Ikurriña Quarter is based on a system that has been adapted to a sitespecific project located in a transit area or space. It is a pneumatic membrane made out of a translucent material in the shape of one or several tubes that people can walk through. The overall structure is based on the Basque flag, aka the 'Ikurriña.' The work suggests a collective experience where each individual is subordinated to a formation that, in turn, remains subordinated to a structure/sign. On the one hand, these corridors transform public pathways, and, at thesame time, they change our perception of the immediate environment. Because of the translucent quality of the material, perception of the surrounding objects and people is blurred. The whole system is a sculpture that is experienced without the realization that what one is walking through is also a political symbol.
TIM ROLLINS AND K.O.S.
Animal Farm '92 (after George Orwell), 1992
Animal Farm is a huge painting depicting various international heads of state quite literally as 'heads' on the bodies of animals, like subversive satyrs or monstrous minotaurs. A collaboration between the artist and the Kids of Survival (K.O.S.), a group of young people from troubled backgrounds, the work was created in the South Bronx, where the Tim Rollins's studio is located.
UGO RONDINONE
Clockwork for Oracles II, 2008
Ugo Rondinone's Clockwork for Oracles II is a mixed-media installation comprised of a rainbow spectrum of 52 mirrored glass windows of a variety of sizes, set against a backdrop of white-washed pages from a local newspaper. The window frames, fashioned out of recycled barn wood painted gray, contrast with the sleekness of the mirrored glass windowpanes. The title, Clockwork for Oracles, is taken from a poem by Edmond Jabès, a writer known for his meditations on exile and Judaism. In Rondinone's words, Jabès's poetry reveals 'a mystical attention to religious experience coupled with a real engagement with daily human conditions.' This intersection of the divine and the mundane is echoed in Rondinone's work, itself a study in contrasts. Clockwork for Oracles asks us to slow down and contemplate the nature of time, while inviting us to enjoy its playful sensory delight.
EVA ROTHSCHILD
Natural Beauty, 2009
With Natural Beauty, Eva Rothschild has created a new body of work drawing on her continued interest in sculptural form and perceptual confusion. Two large black wooden structures, resembling an irregular crystalline grid, are entwined with the serpentine coils of massive leather strips. By evoking a bizarre com - bination of minimal aesthetics and fetish objects at the same time, Rothschild puts us smack dab in the middle of her eclectic artistic cosmos. The act of making and the transformation of materials are fundamental to Rothschild's practice, and through the introduction of new processes, she con - tinually expands her sculptural vocabulary. For Rothschild, the complications surrounding the physical presence of each piece are key: she is always keen to explore the gap between the physical manifestation and the visual perception of the work.
GLEN RUBSAMEN
A Fever Dream, 2010
A modern take on a studiolo of the Renaissance, this complex installation creates the stage set for a dream. Consisting of 45 landscapes installed into a geometric cabinet structure, the images are of various dreamscapes: depictions of nature, architecture, and sculpture printed on mirrors in saturated colors that glow in their own half-light. This curious cabinet of tourism comes to represent a gallery of possible daydream or ‘day-mare’ destinations. In the center of Glen Rubsamen's installation is a doorway that perhaps leads into another space or time. The door is locked, but through its small glass window it is possible to see into the space beyond filled with moving images of the sea, breaking waves, a palm tree, an outcropping of rock, and a ship lying at anchor.
YUKO SHIRAISHI
Space Elevator Tea House, 2009
This imaginary architectural project combines Yuko Shiraishi's fascination with space and Japanese cultural traditions. The concept of the space elevator was popularized by Arthur C. Clarke in his novel The Fountains of Paradise. The idea itself was originally conceived by the Russian physicist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and engineer Yuri Artsutanov. They calculated that it should be possible to create an elevator that could travel up a cable to a satellite in geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers above Earth. NASA and other organizations today are actively experimenting with new technology, their ambition being to create a working space elevator for the 22nd century. Exploiting her interest in Eastern and Western cultural priorities, Shiraishi imagines a space elevator that takes on the form of a traditional Japanese tea house. She modeled her Space Elevator Tea House on the four-and-a-half tatami-mat Yuin ('hidden refuge') built by Sen no Sotan in the early seventeenth century. Host and guests meet in these confined spaces and, through the making and sharing of tea, experience human interaction at its most intense.
FLORIAN SLOTAWA
Studio Box, 2010
Studio Box is a constructed cube housing a projection. Before the exhibition, the structure was placed inside the artist's studio and positioned at various angles to confront its architecture. The resulting sculptural interventions were documented and are now shown as a projection inside the very same cube.
NANCY SPERO
Cri du Coeur, 2005
Cri du Coeur (Cry of the Heart) is the last monumental scroll work on paper by Nancy Spero (1926 - 2009). A hand-printed frieze that wraps around the wall where it meets the floor, the work depicts a continuous band of ancient Egyptian female mourners from the tomb of Ramose of Thebes. With hands clasped and raised in imploring gestures, the striking images in Cri du Coeur are made all the more moving when one considers Spero’s sources, the barrage of media images of women mourning losses in Iraq, Kashmir, and New Orleans, at the time of the making of this work. The installation has become a powerful memorial to the artist herself, who died in October 2009.
GERDA STEINER & JÖRG LENZLINGER
The Conference, 2010
In the center of a black space is a conference room. Laptops, agendas, mobile phones, sheets of paper, coffee cups, a table and chairs have been invaded by the opulent growth of crystals, illuminated by a strong lamp in the center of the room. Crystal chippings cover the table with their increasingly expanding pink excrescence. For once, the people who made decisions at this conference have to bear the consequences.
JOHN STEZAKER
Veil, 1980 - 1983
Veil is an important work by John Stezaker from the early 1980s. Stezaker started to experiment around 1980 with multiple images of nude female figures taken from magazines from the 1920s and 1930s by using a simple Xerox machine. Through the layering of the figures, a cinematic and dynamic effect was created – not unlike that of a frieze depicting women in motion. He then transposed these works on paper to a larger scale, printing the figures life-size on stretches of fine silk organza and the same sequence on muslin. By installing these two layers on top of each other – the slightly transparent organza covering the muslin – a three-dimensional effect is obtained and enhanced by the fact that the pieces of fabric are not stretched but hanging loosely on the wall, thus freely moving against each other. Stezaker intended to show these frieze-like works in a room with the two parts facing each other, but this was unfortunately never realized. Here the work is finally presented as it was intended to be seen by the artist 30 years ago.
SUPERFLEX
Flooded McDonald’s, 2009
In this film, a replica of a McDonald's restaurant gradually floods with water – no customers or staff are present. Slowly, the water level rises until eventually the space becomes completely submerged. Tables and chairs are lifted, glossy French fries float adrift, and a lightweight fiberglass Ronald McDonald bobs up and down on the water surface. The source and the reason of the threat are unseen, but it is certain that there is no escape. Emphasizing this dramatic build-up, Flooded McDonald's makes use of the editing and camerawork of Hollywood disaster movies. The film examines the consequences of consumerism.
JAN TICHY
Installation No. 4 (Towers), 2008
Jan Tichy works at the intersection of video, sculpture, architecture, and photography – many of his works combine these elements. In Installation No. 4 (Towers), a digital video is projected from overhead onto two freestanding paper sculptures. The video projection calls the towers to action in different ways, at times treating them as purely formal elements, while other times implicating them in naturalistic landscapes. The architecture of the towers is familiar, though a precise referent remains unnamed.
MARIJKE VAN WARMERDAM
Couple in the Distance, 2010
In Couple in the Distance a man and a woman sitting on a bench are shown on two separate screens. Two film loops of one and the same moment:
An elderly couple sits in contemplation on a bench amidst green grass in a late afternoon sunset. The camera moves in a circular motion above and beneath them. They are observed in the autumn of their life.
Drops of condensation roll down a window-pane before a hand wipes them away, clearing the view. Through the window, one can gradually discern the relaxed elderly couple. Their presence in the distance, appearing and disappearing, emphasizes the notion of temporality and the end of time. The contrasts 'proximity and distance' and 'appearing and disappearing' are closely related in the work. This strategy of shooting from different angles is used quite frequently by Marijke van Warmerdam, also in her photographic works. In both film loops there is no starting point, no conclusions and no resolution that might give rise to a story. Van Warmerdam is concerned with a realism of surfaces, with seeing rather than explaining, and with the phenomena of moving images rather than with narrative. Couple
AGNÈS VARDA
La Cabane sur la plage (qui est aussi une cabine de projection), 2010 'This shack is made of canvas stretched by ropes: it is a beach or a fisherman's cabin, it is also a projection booth, a mini-theatre for watching the movie, The Mediterranean, with two r’s and one n, between Sète and Agde. A few characters on the beach, stumps in the sea, fishermen pulling a net over. The peace of the world is there, but there is also a beached whale … Beached in Sète, this Cetacea reminds one of the hill of there that, as everyone knows, has the shape of a whale and is used as a city seal. Some beached whales may be given back to the sea if it is done quickly. This whale is not likely to lack water; it is fake, and its skin and fantail are made of black plastic, and its head is that of an Italian statue. Be careful. It's angry because the world is sick.' (Agnès Varda, March 2010)
BILL VIOLA
Pneuma, 1994/2009
Moving images are projected in monochrome into three corners of a darkened square room. Viewers enter through a door at the fourth corner. The projections fill the walls and overlap with each other, creating a continuous image field that wraps around the room. A rich blend of ambient sound permeates the space, as the images appear to coalesce out of a vibrating cloud of abstract grain. Pneuma is an ancient Greek word that has no equivalent in contemporary terms. Commonly translated as soul or spirit, it refers to the breath as well and was conceived as an underlying essence or life force that courses through all of nature, animating it with the 'mind.' In the installation, images alternately emerge in a field of shimmering visual noise and often hover at the threshold of recognition and ambiguity. Indistinct, shifting, and shadowy, the projections become more like memories or internal sensations rather than recorded images of actual places and events as the viewer is submerged in their essence.
IAN WILSON
The Formless Absolute, 2010
To participate in a discussion or for more information, please contact Jan Mot or Massimo Minini.
HAEGUE YANG
Doubles and Couples – Version Berlin, 2010
Haegue Yang's installation Doubles and Couples – Version Berlin consists of five groups of metal vitrines – each filled with venetian blinds and lighting appa - ratuses. The shape of each individual box is based on the size of the artist's home appliances, and each sculpture is made by pairing two of the abstracted machines. The objects encounter one another in a realm of visual and narrative ambiguity, evoking images of a couple grappling with their fundamental separation as physical beings. Her applied use of the form of household machines derives from her interest in themes such as dedication and commitment as well as her quite literally bifurcated existence, living in both Seoul and Berlin. Yang draws attention to the silent presence of these machines in private and domestic spaces, especially the kitchen, as representing a peaceful battlefield for engaging difficult themes.
ZHANG HUAN
Hero No. 1, 2009
'Living as a child in the Central Plains and Henan Province of China, oxen were common. They populated the villages and even lived in your home. To me, oxhide is closely related to the architecture of nature. After I left China, I felt a strong sense of unfamiliarity, so when I see the hide of an ox now, I feel close to it, and my use of it is constituted from this type of complex emotion. Constructing sculptures out of oxhide involves thousands of possibilities. There is no way to determine what the hides will look like or how the skins will appear once attached to the outer surface, and there are as many possibilities of stitching them as there are for apparel. In the end, the face was sewn with a complex stitch style while the rest of the sculpture received the most basic stitch, and the hides were left untrimmed. In this way I've preserved the essence of the hides while expressing the beauty from my heart. Hero No. 1 is born from the primitive passions that inform our future and expresses our wish for rebirth from deep within us. Everybody is his own hero and a part of the biologic evolution.' (Zhang Huan)