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26/5/2011

Bill Bollinger - Lee Bontecou

ZKM_Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe

Bill Bollinger. The Retrospective
Curated by Christiane Meyer-Stoll

"I only do what it is necessary to do. There is no reason to use color, to polish, to bend, to weld, if it is not necessary to do so. Bill Bollinger

A first retrospective in Europe

In the outgoing 1960s, Bill Bollinger (1939–1988) was among the most prominent sculptors of his time, and was associated with the likes of Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson, Eva Hesse and Richard Serra. Slipping into obscurity from around the mid 1970s on, he no longer figured as a presence in the international art world. The exhibition, initially on display at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, and to be shown presently at the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art, is the first retrospective aiming to rediscover the complexity, radicality and intensity characteristic of the artist’s oeuvre. At the same time, the presentation is conceived as a contribution to the current effort in revaluating bygone artistic approaches.

With this large-scale overview of the artist’s work, the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art presents over 30 sculptures and 100 works on paper to a broad public for the first time within Germany. In addition, numerous, hitherto unknown documentary material provides deeper insights into this astonishing work. Together with the publication, produced in conjunction with, and especially for the present exhibition, this retrospective is the fruit of several years of research. A number of the works on display, such as are based on historical documents, Bollinger’s rediscovered instructions for installations and statements by eye-witnesses have been especially reconstructed for the present exhibition.

One of the characteristic features of Bollinger's artistic work is his sensitive treatment of rudimentary, industrially produced materials. The artist manages to make radical, direct and elegant use of such materials as aluminum tubing, ropes, rubber tubing wire meshing, lamps or wheelbarrows.

Bollinger initially studied aeronautical engineering at the prestigious Brown University before turning to painting and taking up his artistic vocation. Around the time of the first moon landing, Bollinger created sculptures that incorporated gravity, balance and attributes specific to an entire range of diverse of materials. Fascinated by curved space, by the vertical and by the horizon, it was cosmos and water which were also of vital thematic interest to him. What emerged were ephemeral, puristic and energy-packed works, which, in view of their radicality, continue to astonish us.

This first ever comprehensive retrospective curated by Christiane Meyer-Stoll and conceptually elaborated in collaboration with Rolf Ricke, was produced by the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein in cooperation with the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art Karlsruhe and The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh.

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Lee Bontecou. Insights
Curated by Andreas F. Beitin

North American artist, Lee Bontecou, is to be honored for the first time since over thirty years with an exhibition in Europe. On the occasion of her 80th birthday, the ZKM provides a glimpse into the artist’s innovative work during the 1960s. It was her extraordinary three-dimensional wall art that made Bontecou – as one of the few women contemporaries in the art scene – a central female artist. The exhibition, Lee Bontecou. Insights, displays a selection of her internationally recognized works of the 1960s.

The ‘60s of the 20 century spawned most of what was innovative in art: Minimal Art, Pop Art, Concept Art, Arte povera, but also Performance and Happening established themselves as artistic styles. And yet it was not only the ideas, but also the use of materials which was to break new ground in art. One of the few women to have occupied an important and internationally recognized position in the western art scene of the era, was Lee Bontecou (*1931). Her work was presented, for example, in several important exhibitions, at the Sao Paolo Biennale in 1961, or at the documenta III in Kassel, in 1964. Furthermore, Bontecou may well be characterized as an artist’s artist, since numerous artists have been inspired by her work.

Impressed by the technical achievements in science and space travel, as well as a new art-immanent material aesthetics, Lee Bontecou produced an especially unique body of work. Beginning with figurative sculptures and abstract smoke signals, towards the end of the 1950s it was the large, three-dimensional wall art, at once picture, relief, and sculpture which then began to emerge. It was this increasingly complex use of materials, the dynamization of the everyday, and the aesthetics of Pop Art, which became the hallmark of lee Bontecou’s wall sculptures up until the end of the 1960s. Similarly, the extensive graphic work variously reflects such influences.

Press contact: Dominika Szope
Head Department Press
Phone: +49 (0)721 / 8100 1220

Image: Bill Bollinger

Opening: Fri, May 27th, 2011, 6 p.m.

ZKM | Center for Art and Media
Lorenzstrasse 19, Karlsruhe
Opening hours: Wed–Fri 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Sat, Sun 11 a. m. – 6 p.m.
Mon, Tue closed

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