John Baldessari
dal 11/6/2011 al 29/7/2011
Segnalato da
11/6/2011
John Baldessari
Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Double Vision. John Baldessari made a name for himself at the end of the sixties with photographic works into which he integrated images and texts from advertising and film. Ten years later he started producing conceptual videos devoted to studies in perception, meaning and interpretation, and thriving on dry, absurd humour.
We are pleased to announce our next exhibition presenting a new body of work by John Baldessari.
The artist lives and works in Santa Monica, California. One of the world's most important icons of
conceptual art, Baldessari is celebrating his eightieth birthday with this exhibition. His work has influenced
generations of artists, including Cindy Sherman, David Salle, and Barbara Kruger. His photographs and text
collages, as well as the characteristic use of dots, have left their mark on the development
of postmodernism. Baldessari's works are seen regularly worldwide. A major retrospective, "Pure Beauty",
opened in 2009 at London’s Tate Modern with subsequent stops at the Los Angeles County Museum in
2010 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010/11. Mai 36 Galerie has represented the artist for
over twenty years.
John Baldessari made a name for himself at the end of the sixties with photographic works into which he
integrated images and texts from advertising and film. Ten years later he started producing
conceptual videos devoted to studies in perception, meaning and interpretation, and thriving on dry, absurd
humour. Baldessari has a vast archive of film stills, photographs, clippings and postcards. These are an
endless source of surprising new insights created by cutting up selected pictures, pasting and painting
over them, rearranging them and making collages. The scenes in these works invariably evoke
disconcerting associations and a wide spectrum of meanings. By undermining our expectations, Baldessari
uncovers astonishing perceptual potential and compels viewers to take a more critical approach to the
imagery of the mass media.
In addition, the artist estranges visual icons of art history and gives them false attributions. Thus Henri
Matisse’s still life Goldfish and Sculpture of 1911 is authored by Warhol. Baldessari has zoomed in on the
glass bowl standing on the table, where the three red fish of the original have been painted blue. Marcel
Duchamp's famed ready-made, Bicycle Wheel of 1913, is ascribed to Malevich. It focuses on the wheel
itself, which has neither spokes nor a fork, so that the black circle seems to be floating above the stool.
Similarly, Piet Mondrians composition – apparently a Rodchenko – shows only a diagonally inscribed,
cropped square outlined in black. Baldessari's version of the melting clock in Salvador Dali‘s Persistence of
Memory, 1931 – after Duchamp – is pictured in horizontal distortion against a reduced background. By
wresting iconic motifs from their traditional context, subjecting them to radical intervention and placing them
in an unusual perspective, Baldessari effectively alters their meaning, while still allowing viewers to identify
formal similarities between the originals and his versions. At the same time, through the gesture of reducing
the compositions to their essentials in ironic allusion to "less is more", Baldessari expresses his sceptical
view of the art historical canon. [Text: Dominique von Burg]
Image: JOHN BALDESSARI, Double Vision: Warhol (Orange & Blue), 2011
varnished archival print on canvas with oil paint
203.5 x 147.5 cm (80 1/8 x 58 1/8 in.)
For visuals, please contact office@mai36.com. We look forward to welcoming you to the gallery.
Preview, Sunday, 12 June 2011, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
John Baldessari will be present.
Mai 36 Galerie
Ramistrasse 37 - Zurich
Opening hours: Tue-Fri, 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Sat, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Open House Weekend Zürich: 11 and 12 June 2011, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.