domenica 8 dicembre 2013

GO! YOU SURE? YEAH - LUMA/WESTBAU, ZURICH



GO! YOU SURE? YEAH
curated by Nicola Ruffo and Tanja Trampe
A POOL exhibition
LUMA/Westbau - Löwenbräukunst
Limmatstrasse 270 - Zurich
23 November 2013 – 19 January 2014

Go! You sure? Yeah. is the second exhibition presented by POOL. Curators Nicola Ruffo and Tanja Trampe select artworks from the collections of Maja Hoffmann and Michael Ringier, focusing on works that probe conventions and categories dominating the realm of film and cinema.
In the 1960s, artists began to broaden the very concept of cinema—most notably Stan VanDerBeek, a pioneer of the Expanded Cinema practice. His visually stunning, walk-in installation Movie-Drome, which resembles a dome designed by R. Buckminster Fuller, will become accessible again for the first time in Europe on the occasion of this show. In the 1970s, Jack Goldstein appropriated not only Hollywood’s classic motifs but also its techniques, while contemporary positions like those represented by Douglas Gordon, Cindy Sherman or Keren Cytter engage with the aesthetic legacy of the classic film industry. Peter Doig’s posters from the series “Studio Film Club” advertised the different films projected in the weekly film club he had founded in his Trinidad studio, and were created on the day of each screening. The 25 works featured in the show offer intriguing points of departure for engaging with the properties of art that explores, primarily, the cinematic medium and its representation, as well as the cinematographic event itself.
Works from the collections will enter into an artistic dialog with two site-specific interventions created especially for this show by Zurich-based artists Michael Meier and Christoph Franz, as well as Eric Andersen. Their installations employ different strategies to rupture the usual framework of a collection exhibition and its spatial circumstances.
With their piece Astro Spiral, artist duo Michael Meier (b. 1980) and Christoph Franz (b. 1982) created a large-scale installation that is at once an autonomous sculpture and an accessible object. Working with posters as his medium, artist Eric Andersen (b. 1980) culled different film stills which he integrated using a collage technique to create his own cinematographic universe. The poster series, an edition of silk screens laid out in the exhibition, is an artwork multiple as well as an exhibition catalogue. Used as an extensive wallpaper, it also sets the aesthetic tone for the entire show.
The show’s title, like the titles of many of the works on view, originates from the canon of popular film culture. Go! You sure? Yeah. is the final dialogue between Thelma and Louise in the eponymous film by Ridley Scott (US, 1991)—just before they launch their car off a cliff and plunge to their deaths. The film ends with a shot of the car frozen in mid-air, thus leaving the visualization of end of the scene to the imagination of the individual viewer. Similarly, the exhibition pairs moving images with static pictures to set in motion the machinations of the inner film played in the viewer’s mind.

Featuring works by: Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Doug Aitken, Francis Alÿs, Fiona Banner, Robert Barry, Olaf Breuning, Bruce Conner, Keren Cytter, Peter Doig, Trisha Donnelly, Olafur Eliasson, Urs Fischer, Jack Goldstein, Douglas Gordon, Jonathan Horowitz, Allan McCollum, Sarah Morris, Takeshi Murata, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, John Stezaker, Stan VanDerBeek, Jeff Wall

Stan VanDerBeek, Movie-Drome, 1963–1966/2012. Courtesy the Estate of Stan VanDerBeek. Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zurich.