Kunsthalle Zürich at the Museum Bärengasse
12.11.11 – 15.1.12
Opening: Friday, 11 November 2011
Kerstin Brätsch / Adele Röder
«Vorahnung [United Brothers and Sisters]»
28.1.–9.4.12
Opening: Friday, 27 January 2012
Yüksel Arslan «Artures»
Until recently, Turkish artist Yüksel Arslan (born 1933, lives and works in Paris) remained almost unknown to a broader public. In 1962, he left his homeland and went to live in Paris where he has worked ever since on a visual oeuvre by and through the reception of cultural, sociological, philosophical and artistic literature in his apartment. The exhibition at Kunsthalle Zürich presents for the first time a selection of over 200 works since 1959 outside of Turkey and focuses on the so called Artures, works on paper using a unique technique with special paints. Thematically, the work is permeated by a confrontation with the relationship between thought and mysticism, between myth, science, and visual arts, and the philosophical, literary and musical currents.
The exhibition is curated by Beatrix Ruf in collaboration with Oliver Zybok and will travel to Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Spring 2012.
Kunsthalle Zürich at the Löwenbräu complex
August 2012: Reopening at the renovated and extended Löwenbräu complex
1.9.–4.11.12
Opening: Friday, 31 August 2012
Wolfgang Tillmans
The first exhibition in the Kunsthalle Zürich’s renovated and extended premises in the Löwenbräu art complex is dedicated to the return of an artist who presented his very first institutional exhibition at the Kunsthalle Zürich in 1995, a show that marked the beginning of his international career. Tillmans, who works in photography and video, is one of the most important representatives of the art of the 1990s and has created icons of a generation with his photographs. His work revolves around the life and concerns of his generation, and includes portraits of friends and individuals from the London and international club, fashion and gay scenes. He also provides a committed and personal insight into the global social and political events of this generation. In the opening exhibition at the new Löwenbräu, Wolfgang Tillmans (born in Remscheid, Germany, in 1968; lives and works in London and Berlin) will present a large-scale show, which will provide a platform for previously unseen and recent experimental works and innovative forms of presentation.
Helen Marten
The Kunsthalle Zürich’s second opening exhibition in the new Löwenbräu art complex is the first institutional solo exhibition to be presented by British artist Helen Marten (born in Macclesfield, England, in 1985; lives and works in London). Marten belongs to a generation of artists, for whom the internet is no longer a mere media-based counterpart, but an environment that is equal to physical reality. In her works, which lend central importance to the real, the physical and craftsmanship, she uses everyday materials from the ‘warehouse’ of the present – for example, metal, particleboard, door handles, water bottles, clay and mobile telephones – which she deploys playfully with a view to discovering a new syntax of the real. In her installations, videos, sculptures and objects, Marten handles reality codes, languages, iconic images and symbols with confidence and refers to art history, architecture, design, popular culture and digital phenomena with a supreme lightness of touch. In this way, she develops an idiom with which she humorously describes both the reference system of art and the coding of the visual that changes everything.
17.11.12–20.1.13
Opening: Friday, 16 November 2012
Sturtevant «Image over Image»
Since her debut in New York 1965 Sturtevant has notouriosly insisted on the power of thought and performed investigations into the understructure of art. Her legendary repetitions of other artists work constitutes a pioneering achievement in challenging concepts such as originality, autenticity and conventions surrounding authorship. Indeed Sturtevant’s first artistic statements are contemporary with and predates Barthes’, Foucault’s and Deleuze’s most famous essays and lectures in this field.
In recent years Sturtevant has expanded her practice by including mass-media images and her own filmed material. This has put a new light over her career and emphasizes how her life-long artistic practice has continously and effectively pointed harsch, rebellious and intelligent critique of a society which to an increasing degree is being built up of simulacra and around experience industry. During the last Venice biennial Sturtevant was awarded the golden lion for a life time achievment in the arts.
The exhibition includes comprehensive group of works and ranges from her repetitions of artists such as Warhol, Duchamp, Johns and Gonzalez-Torres to three of her latest large video installations.
The exhibition Sturtevant: «Image over Image» is produced by Moderna Museet in Stockholm (March 17, 2012 – May 27, 2012) in collaboration with Kunsthalle Zürich. Curators: Fredrik Liew and Beatrix Ruf.