MINIMALISM AND AFTER II
New Aquisitions
John M Armleder, Richard Artschwager, Wolfgang Berkowski, Stephen Bram, Daniel Buren, Ian Burn, Hanne Darboven, Gene Davis, Hermann Glöckner, Benoit Gollety, Katharina Grosse, Esther Hiepler, Sol LeWitt, John McLaughlin, Olivier Mosset, David Novros, Charlotte Posenenske, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Henryk Stazewski, Katja Strunz, Michael Zahn.
Daimler Contemporary
February 14
- May 18, 2003
new opening hours:
daily 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Ablaufsteuerung, 2002
Photoprint on acetate, plastic, metal, glass, wood, enamelUntitled (tic tac toe series), 2002
Acrylic on canvas, 9 partsUntitled (Menu with Sub-Menu),
2002 Acrylic on acrylic glass, 2 parts
Wolfgang Berkowski
*1960 Salzkotten, D, lives in Rome, IAblaufsteuerung, 2002
Photoprint on acetate, plastic, metal, glass, wood, enamel
Ablaufsteuerung (sequence control):
1. specific black diagrams, (size) related to the projected size on the retina, presented (always) on the same position on an A4 sheet, two line widths 0.13 cm; 0.25 cm organized in groups/sequences,
2. elongated black objects, (white) section related to A4, set on rollers, appear isolated or in groups that have a specific or internal relationship. Diagrams are analytical tools for the artist, which constitute a private, inaccessible code. Seriality, or as we call it »the strategy of one after another,« guarantees a self-contained and non referential quality to them. At the same time, the display, which we can now call the experience, acts as a grammar and gives a physical presence to the sign(s), a structure that induces a reading. The elements of his installations act as individual parts of a system and are »not in themselves important, but (...) relevant only in the way they are used in the enclosed logic in the whole,« writes Mel Bochner in 1977. (Cecilia Canziani)
Olivier Mosset
*1944 Bern, CH, lives in Tucson, USAUntitled (tic tac toe series), 2002
Acrylic on canvas, 9 partsRadical - this term characterizes not only the direction of abstract painting which Olivier Mosset co-created in New York in the seventies but also the attitude of the artist. The foundation was 70s political involvement in the political unrest in May 1968, which he experienced personally as he was working in Paris at the time.
Mosset's new tic tac toe series is a self-mocking as well as self-critical summary of his work: »There is always a dialectic between what you do and what you have done. Here the circles (the doughnuts, noughts) were looking at paintings with circles done in the late 60s and early 70s. The crosses also look at previous paintings (with interlocking, bigger shaped crosses). Maybe the reason I'm doing the work is just to know what it is about. I say, quoting Fassbinders movie Querelle, ›each man kills the thing he loves‹. A constant of the evolution of contemporary practices has been their self-criticism and I believe a kind of death wish.« (Olivier Mosset)
Michael Zahn
*1963 in Cleveland, USA, lives in New York, USAUntitled (Menu with Sub-Menu),
2002 Acrylic on acrylic glass, 2 partsMichael Zahn combines in his paintings an idiosyncratic approach to the specific art-historical horizon of European and American Minimalism with an analysis of a typically American preoccupation with surfaces, which today he sees expressed first and foremost in the machinations of the personal computer. Since 1999, the artist has been working on painterly translations of computer software's visible symbolic metaphors. Familiar icons such as file folders, documents, and the trash bin are transformed into objects of a Minimalist bent, markedly expressed in abstract pictorial terms. Untitled (Menu with Sub-Menu) is characterized by a reductive, rhetorical black and white structure, and a Minimalist division of surface, with severe lines and bands continuing to the painting's edges. An unambiguous interpretation of content is no longer possible, as the onlooker is able to grasp the intention through the unusual way the two panels are hung, and by cues provided by the work's title.
