Cory Arcangel
Alex Bag
Patterson Beckwith
Judith Bernstein
Vittorio Brodmann
Marvin Gaye Chetwynd
Simon Denny
Harun Farocki
Jan Peter Hammer
Nic Hess
Danny McDonald
Dawn Mellor
Claus Richter
Tabor Robak
Timur Si-Qin
Michael Smith
Lily van der Stokker
Julia Wachtel
Hannah Weinberger
Raphael Gygax
Judith Welter
On Play and Critique. The adoptions and manipulations of motifs from video games, television shows, movies, and cartoons should not be seen as mere pop-cultural quotations: the artists invited simultaneously comment on the capitalist production of these consumer worlds.
Cory Arcangel
,
Alex Bag & Patterson Beckwith
,
Judith Bernstein
,
Vittorio Brodmann
,
Marvin Gaye Chetwynd
,
Simon Denny
,
Harun Farocki
,
Jan Peter Hammer
,
Nic Hess
,
Danny McDonald
,
Dawn Mellor
,
Claus Richter
,
Tabor Robak
,
Timur Si-Qin
,
Michael Smith
,
Lily van der Stokker
,
Julia Wachtel
,
Hannah Weinberger
Curators: Raphael Gygax and Judith Welter
The group exhibition
Toys Redux
- On Play and Critique
brings together artists who make
creative use of formats and imagery from popular culture usually addressed to children
or teenagers. Such adoptions and manipulations of motifs from video games, television
shows, movies, and cartoons should not be seen as mere pop-cultural quotations: they
simultaneously comment on the capitalist production of these consumer worlds. Their
pop aesthetic and the promise of an
"innocent"
and playful universe of childlike fantasy
contrast with the underlying reality of neoliberal advertising and marketing strategies.
The thematic exhibition unfolds a dialogue between works by artists from several
generations, including selected pieces from the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst’s
own collections, and expands on one of the museum’s ongoing central themes previously
explored in shows by Cory Arcangel (2005), Marvin Gaye Chetwynd (2007), and Alex
Bag (2011) as well as
Deterioration, They Said
(2009).
The works on display in the exhibition bring a variety of themes and formal references into focus.
The film installation
Parallele I–IV
(2012–2014) by Harun Farocki (b. Czech Republic, 1944; d.
Germany, 2014) examines the rhetoric and aesthetic of video games, an entertainment genre that
is widely popular with the children—and adults—of the digital age. In its four sections, Farocki
traces the evolution of computer-animated visual universes and scrutinizes their construction and
signification. Cory Arcangel (b. USA, 1978) and Tabor Robak (b. USA, 1986) similarly explore
the visual language and functions of video games as well as their economic significance. In
Super
Landscape 1
(2005), Arcangel deconstructs the 1985 classic
Super Mario Bros.
Robak’s complex
programmed animation
Analphabetic Aquarium
(2014) studies the immersive surface and
mechanisms of today’s computer games.
Television is another system of reference in many of the works on view. Entertainment formats
that invited playful interaction saw a veritable boom in the 1980s and early 1990s, developing
audience involvement techniques that several of the contributors to the exhibition harness for their
own purposes. In the video
Mike Builds a Shelter
(1985), Michael Smith (b. USA, 1951) satirizes
Do-It-Yourself shows targeted at home improvement devotees. Alex Bag (b. USA, 1969) & Patterson
Beckwith (b. USA, 1972) created their multi-episode late-night show
Cash from Chaos / Unicorns
& Rainbows
(1994–1997) as a public-access television project. In his video
The Jungle Book
(2013), Jan Peter Hammer (b. Germany, 1972) reflects on the narrative genre of the educational
children’s show, emphasizing the ambivalence of playful formats designed to entertain children
while also inculcating specific values in them or, as in this instance, recruiting them as future
consumers.
Claus Richter (b. Germany, 1971) has piled up gift cartons for his installation
Very Large Self-Portrait
with Train and Colored Lights
(2015) to comment on the escapist allure of fantasy worlds that business
empires like the Walt Disney Company turn into lines of merchandise. The intimate nexus between
artistic production, pop aesthetics, and the laws of economics is the subject of the wall painting
Interesting Work
(2003/2014) by Lily van der Stokker (b. Netherlands, 1954), which incorporates
fragmentary notes on the financial calculations of everyday life. The ornamental arrangement of
animal-based logos of international corporations in the installation
kollekTIEREnd (
1998) by Nic Hess
(b. Switzerland, 1968) as well as the echoes of merchandising and advertising in the works of Timur
Si-Qin (b. Germany, 1984), Danny McDonald (b. USA, 1971), and Simon Denny (b. New Zealand,
1982) illustrate how closely play and marketing are intertwined.
A book accompanying the
exhibition with essays by
Esther Buss, Alexander R.
Galloway, Raphael Gygax,
Hans Ulrich Reck, and Judith
Welter as well as interviews
with the artists will be published by JRP|Ringier.
Saturday 13.06. 1 pm
Artist’s Talk (free admission, in English)
Judith Bernstein in conversation with Raphael Gygax and Judith Welter
Saturday 13.06. 5 pm
Performance (free admission, limited seating)
Claus Richter: Das schlaue Tier und seine Feinde (2015)
Image: Jan Peter Hammer, The Jungle Book, 2013, HD Video (Farbe, Ton), Videostill, Courtesy of the artist and Supportico Lopez, Berlin
Press contact
René Müller T +41 44 2772727 presse@migrosmuseum.ch
Opening: friday 29.05.2015 6–9 p.m.
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst
Limmatstrasse 270 CH–8005 Zurich
Hours:
Tue/Wed/Fri 11 am–6 pm
Thu 11 am–8 pm
Sat/Sun 10 am–5 pm
Admission
Adults: CHF 12
Reduced: CHF 8
Thu from 5–8 pm: free admission