calendario eventi  :: 

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3/6/2014

Three exhibitions

Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich

Tobias Putrih
Solar Limb

Curated by Sabine Schaschl

Museum Haus Konstruktiv is delighted to be able to host Switzerland's first solo exhibition on the internationally acclaimed conceptual artist Tobias Putrih (b. 1972 in Slovenia, lives in Cambridge, MA).

Putrih's interest in the utopias and ideologies of the traditional avant-garde, and his inquiry into how architecture, design, science and art can influence society, are particularly enlightening against the backdrop of constructivist-concrete art history. Putrih's works have already been shown in numerous highly renowned exhibitions and institutions: this artist was a representative of the Slovenian pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); his solo exhibition at Centre George Pompidou in Paris (2010) was also impressive, as were those at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK, (2009) and the Neuberger Museum of Art – State University of New York (2007). Putrih represents a young generation of artists who move freely between art forms, mainly paying attention to conceptual considerations. At Museum Haus Konstruktiv, an exhibition with new site-specific installations is presented.

Tobias Putrih took the first futurist opera, "Victory Over the Sun", as a starting point for the exhibition "Solar Limb". This opera premiered in 1913 at the Luna Park Theatre in Saint Petersburg, with Kazimir Malevich involved in the lighting design, costume design and stage design. Together with Kruchonych (libretto), Khlebnikov (prolog) and Matyushin (music), Malevich subverted the perceptual patterns of a highly rationally oriented worldview and sought an expressive power that went beyond the logic of language and form. In the opera's prolog, the "Futurist Strongmen" fight against the sun and want to lock it up in a concrete house. "The light of the sun is transferred to the interior: Our physiognomy is dark. Our light is within," proclaims the libretto. The struggle waged against the sun in the opera has often been seen as a political and artistic revolt against time-honored values. Malevich designed a stage curtain that, for the first time, showed a black square – as an icon of the "nothing that has become substance". As a painted image, the "Black Square" would become a key work in art history, and the initial work of suprematism. The fundamental inquiry into that which goes beyond the visible, and into the intellectual in art, also formed an important starting point for the theories of concrete art, and now plays a central role in Putrih's exhibition.

In the large exhibition hall on the first floor, the artist presents two video projections, together with a modular arrangement of seating furniture, which can be freely moved by the visitors. A projection directed at the floor is based on animated images of the sun's surface that were produced by the American National Sun Observatory.

This shows the so-called solar limb, the outer ring or edge of the sun. However, the image of the sun's core remains largely invisible. On the other hand, the wall projection shows an egg-shaped moving motif with a core of light, the light intensity of which decreases and increases. The egg form often appears in Putrih's work, and there are also many demonstrable instances of its use in the general history of art and culture. As the first form of housing for living creatures, it is a symbol for architecture, for protection, and for the source of something new. The artist generated this form with the aid of a photogram of a chicken egg. The light projected onto the wall is a negative of the original shadow image. The egg's interior remains largely concealed, even though the light in the photogram hints at its existence.

Putrih's exhibition on the first floor raises the question of the last possible light – either in the form of an almost invisible sun, of which only the edge can still be seen (floor projection) or in the form of a new light, seeking to break out of an egg-shaped universe (wall projection). Both are supplemented with sound composed by William Kingswood, who reinterpreted fragments of Matyushin's microtonal music for his composition, thus generating a direct link with the opera "Victory Over the Sun".

The works on the second floor express the admission that an image that comes from the world beyond objectivity can indeed ultimately only be represented via a conventional object. This representability can also be defined via a process that thematizes the disappearance of the object itself, as demonstrated by the new sculptures in the "Macula" series. Just like the image of the sun's edge, the object in question must also have an empty center – or the center absorbs the light. On the basis of these considerations, Putrih has conceived a series of translucent cardboard columns, the unchanging height of which is at odds with an increasing enlargement of the core diameter. The artist has cut rings into the tubes, so that they appear semi-transparent and generate a different visual perception, depending on where the observer stands. The empty center and the incisions enable a subtle optical game.

Putrih gives rise to a non-representational metaworld that atmospherically traces the revolutionary aspirations of the opera. Anyone who follows its tracks is carried off into an intellectual universe that advocates a dominance ("supremacy") of feelings. According to Putrih, the only option that the recipient is thus left with, is "to build a nest from the modular pieces of furniture, to arrange them, to engage with the atmosphere, and to think about the absent image". The artist sees the exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv as an attempt to create an image outside the objective world. One feels reminded of a postulate from Max Bill, which he formulated in the introduction to the catalog for the 1949 exhibition "Zürcher konkrete Kunst" (Zurich Concrete Art): "the goal of concrete art is to develop objects for intellectual use". Theo van Doesburg also demanded the following: "The artwork must be completely conceived and designed in the mind, before it is realized. It must contain none of formal circumstances of nature, the senses, or the feelings."

Barclays Bank (Suisse) SA is honoured to sponsor the Tobias Putrih exhibition as part of its on-going support to innovation and to art.

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Florian Dombois
Struck Modernism

In cooperation with Collegium Helveticum, a joint initiative of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich

Since the 1990s, conceptual artist Florian Dombois (b. 1966 in Berlin, works in Zurich) has primarily addressed the representation of seismological phenomena in the context of art. Here, this qualified geophysicist focuses on models, landforms, seismic activity, tectonic activity, scientific fictions and technical fictions in various media and formats. His repertoire encompasses sound installations, spatial installations, happenings and performances. The audio project "Struck Modernism", which he has realized at Museum Haus Konstruktiv, enables an unusual acoustic engagement with our con- structivist-concrete and conceptual heritage.

For his exhibition project, Florian Dombois takes the contents of Museum Haus Konstruktiv's collection as a starting point, from which he formulates his misgivings regarding the optimism of modernism. For this pur- pose, he has subdivided the artists represented in the collection into two groups: those born before 1960 and those born afterward. The objects and sculptures from the older generation form the basis of his sound in- stallation, which can be heard in our museum's outdoor area and at its entrance. In observance of the con- servational requirements, the artist selected 23 works, which he struck with a mallet. The natural vibrations of the struck objects, the sound spectrum of which varies according to their materiality, were monitored and recorded with a contact microphone. With the shift from the visible to the audible, Dombois formulates an attempt at an alternative reception, an altered perceptual perspective. With the aid of a computer program, the 23 samples were combined to form a clock and supplemented by a kind of carillon that brings in improvi- sations every three hours. Once every 24 hours at midnight, the sequential order of the sounds is redefined by means of a random generator and a gap is added, so that the quarter-hourly chimes and the hourly chimes are each omitted once a day. The sound installation plays at quarter-hourly intervals like a tower clock – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – and from its threshold position, it questions the time in the muse- um's interior space and in the urban exterior space. Moreover, it repeatedly pauses, during its gaps, thus calling itself into question.

With the works by the artists born after 1960, Sabine Schaschl and Dombois have curated the exhibition "From the Collection" on the 4th floor. This picks up on issues from "Struck Modernism" and transfers them to the younger part of the collection.

A publication to accompany the exhibition is being released by publisher The Green Box, with an essay by composer Isabel Mundry and an interview with Florian Dombois conducted by Sabine Schaschl. The artist is also releasing a special edition (with 25 exemplars), comprising a manipulated record and an intaglio print.

Both editions are signed and numbered, and sold together with the catalog as a complete set.

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Auguste Herbin
From the Lahumière Collection

curated by Sabine Schaschl and Evelyne Bucher

Today, Auguste Herbin (b. 1882 in Quiévy, d. 1960 in Paris) is celebrated as a pioneer of non- figurative abstraction in France, even though his journey to that point was by all means hesitant. He progressed through various phases of modern painting; his oeuvre is characterized by a diversity of styles, ranging from impressionism and fauvism to cubism, orphism, purism and new objectivity, right through to radical geometric abstraction. In 1931, together with Georges Vantongerloo, Theo van Doesburg, Jean Hélion, Hans Arp and František Kupka, he founded the association Abstraction- Création, with which he published the journal of the same name from 1932 to 1936. In 1942/1943, the need for a self-imposed system of rules led to his "alphabet plastique", a geometric vocabulary of colored forms resembling letters and referring to Goethe's Theory of Colors, as well as to Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical writings. Herbin's obstinately developed work brought him recognition on an international level: for instance, his works were shown between 1955 and 1972 at documenta I, II and V. He was represented in a large exhibition in 1979 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and in Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, in 1987. Museum Haus Konstruktiv is ex- hibiting a distinct selection of works from the Parisian Lahumière collection.

In the Auguste Herbin solo exhibition, Museum Haus Konstruktiv presents an oeuvre that ties in with various art movements from the first half of the 20th century, and yet constantly demonstrates its originality. Herbin's career as an artist begins in 1899 when he is accepted at École des Beaux-Arts in Lille, where his first post- impressionist works, such as "Paysage nocturne à Lille", are produced. In 1901, he moves to Paris, where he visits influential exhibitions by Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat, and initially associates himself with fauv- ism. Cézanne's 1907 retrospective at Salon d’Automne, as well as the close proximity of his studio to those of Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, encourage him to address cubism intensively. His first works inspired by cubism (and later by orphism and purism) appear in 1913. The step toward pure, sometimes geometric ab- straction, around 1917, can initially be read as a logical consequence of cubism. Thus, it is all the more astonishing that Herbin abandons this first abstract phase in the years 1921 to 1926, in favor of figurative painting. Herbin is not the only one who returns to representation in the post-war era: this shift can also be observed in Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso.

In retrospect, Herbin's figurative works are to be positioned in the context of new objectivity, which is stylisti- cally characterized by clear, austere visual composition and a precise painting technique that is often remi- niscent of the old masters. With urban and architectural views, such as "Paysage à la maison rouge" and "Le port" (both 1925), as well as the 1926 still life "Les concombres", this French artist represents the genres typical of this art movement. Just when the movement has made a name for itself in art history and become widespread, he takes his leave from this representational form of expression once and for all, and applies himself more to abstractly organic, often spiral-like forms, before eventually pursuing geometric abstraction once again. In 1931, together with Georges Vantongerloo, Theo van Doesburg, Jean Hélion, Hans Arp and František Kupka, he founds the Abstraction-Création movement, which publishes five issues of an epony- mous journal from 1932 to 1936, and strives to combine various non-figurative painting movements.

In 1942/1943, as a result of his engagement with Goethe's Theory of Colors and Rudolf Steiner's anthropos- ophy (Herbin attends a seminar at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, in 1939), Herbin develops the "alphabet plastique", which marks the start of his last creative period. This alphabet is based on Herbin's conviction that secret relationships exist between letters, musical sounds, colors and forms, such that words and tones can be expressed in colors and forms. With this in mind, he assigns a color, a musical sound, and one or more geometric forms to each letter: so according to his system of rules, the letter C, for example, is dark red, has the form of a circle or square, and corresponds to the musical tone syllables do and so. Herbin adheres to this self-defined composition system to the last. He paints pictures that visualize numbers, the names of months, weekdays and first names, but also terms and expressions loaded with meaning, such as "Vierge", "Homme et Femme", "Foetus", "Guerre et Paix" and "Abri". These terms are selected in a manner that is by no means arbitrary: it comes from a spiritual worldview, based on the teachings of Goethe and Steiner. In 1949, Herbin publishes his theoretical reflections in the written work "L'art non-figuratif non- objectif", which will take on great significance for a younger generation of artists.

Even though Herbin was a member of numerous art movements, he remained a loner to the very end. His works demonstrate an obstinate, individual, self-contained whole, such that Harald Szeemann exhibited them at documenta VI (1972) in the category "Individual Mythologies".

The solo show at Museum Haus Konstruktiv (the first in Switzerland for over fifty years) spans two floors and is filled with works from the collection belonging to the married couple Jean-Claude and Anne Lahumière. This collection is characterized not only by a first-class selection of large-format oil paintings, but also by the corresponding preliminary drawings and gouaches. In addition, the collection also includes a sketchbook of Herbin's, which documents, step by step, the creation of the works based on the "alphabet plastique".

A new edition of the 2010 Galerie Lahumière publication "Auguste Herbin", with a text by Serge Lemoine and a foreword by Sabine Schaschl, is being released to coincide with the exhibition.

Image: Tobias Putrih, -Lewk/7, 2013. B&w fiber print. Courtesy Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin / Ljubljana

For further information and requests please contact:
Esther Quetting
e.quetting@hauskonstruktiv.ch
+41 44 217 70 98

Exhibition opening: 4 June, 6 pm

Museum Haus Konstruktiv
Selnaustrasse 25 - 8001 Zürich
Opening Hours
Mon closed
Tue / Thu – Sun 11–17h
Wed 11–20h
Public Holidays:
8.6. Whit Sunday 11–17h
9.6. Whit Monday 11–17h
1.8. National Holiday 11–17h
Admission fees
Adults: CHF 16.00
children/students/pensioners/disabled persons with ID: CHF 12.00
Groups of students of the universities in Zurich and vocational college classes from Zurich: free of charge
Groups of students of the ETH and all other universities as well as vocational college classes from outside Zurich: concessions
School Children aged 7–16: CHF 5.00
Group Admition (10 visitors or more): CHF 12.00 per visitor Children under 7 free Members/donors free Owner ZurichCARD free

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