calendario eventi  :: 

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10/7/2014

Two exhibitions

Musee d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean - Mudam, Luxembourg

Damage Control
Art and Destruction Since 1950
Exhibition from 12 July to 12 October 2014

Destruction has played a wide range of roles in contemporary art - as rebellion or protest, as spectacle and release, or as an essential component of re-creation and restoration. Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950, on view at Mudam Luxembourg from July 12 through October 12, 2014, offers an overview, if by no means an exhaustive study, of this central element in contemporary culture. Featuring approximately 90 works by nearly 40 international artists, and including painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, film, video, installation and performance, the exhibition presents many of the myriad ways in which artists have considered and invoked destruction in their process.

While destruction as a theme can be traced throughout art history, from the early atomic age it has become a pervasive cultural element. In the immediate post-World War II years, to invoke destruction in art was to evoke the war itself: the awful devastation of battle, the firebombing of entire cities, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, and, of course, the Holocaust. Art seemed powerless in the face of that terrible history. But by the early 1950s, with the escalation of the arms race and the prospect of nuclear annihilation, the theme of destruction in art took on a new energy and meaning.

In the decades since, destruction has persisted as an essential component of artistic expression. Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 offers an overview of this prevalent motif. Many of the earlier works in the exhibition directly record nuclear bombs or their aftermath, or use such documentation as a starting point for broader commentary. The use of found film, television, and photography as a source expanded more widely in the 1960s as the importance of media coverage of disasters on a cataclysmic or everyday scale increased.

Other artists adopted more conceptual or symbolic approaches to address the potential for destruction in the world or as a reaction to social conventions. Destruction has also been employed as a means of questioning art institutions or challenging the very meaning of art itself. In many of the artworks on view, regardless of time period, medium, or intent, the desire to control destruction or to emphasize the integral relationship between construction and destruction is central.

But whether as rebellion or protest, as spectacle and release, or as an important facet of re-creation and restoration, it is apparent that for generations of artists internationally, destruction has served as an essential means of considering and commenting upon a host of the most pressing artistic, cultural, and social issues of our time.

Under the Patronage of the Embassy of the United States in Luxembourg

Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 is organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, in association with Mudam Luxembourg and Universalmuseum Joanneum/Kunsthaus Graz.

The international tour of Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 received major funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art, and is also made possible through generous support from the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and the Japan Foundation.

Artists Ai Weiwei, Roy Arden, John Baldessari, Walead Beshty, Monica Bonvicini, Mircea Cantor, Vija Celmins, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Bruce Conner, Luc Delahaye, Thomas Demand, Sam Durant, Harold Edgerton, Dara Friedman, Ori Gersht, Jack Goldstein, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Christopher Wool, Douglas Gordon, Mona Hatoum, Larry Johnson, Yves Klein, Michael Landy, Christian Marclay, Gordon Matta-Clark, Steve McQueen, Gustav Metzger, Juan Muñoz, Laurel Nakadate, Yoshitomo Nara, Arnold Odermatt, Yoko Ono, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Pipilotti Rist, Thomas Ruff, Ed Ruscha, Joe Sola, Jean Tinguely, Sh�omei T�omatsu, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol

Curators
Kerry Brougher, Director, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Russell Ferguson, Professor, Department of Art, University of California at Los Angeles

Main partner of the exhibition at Mudam: SES

events within the framework of the exhibition

Piano Destruction Concert
By Raphael Montanez Ortiz
11.07.2014, 8 pm

Film projections
14.09–12.10.2014, every Sunday
Detailed program: www.mudam.lu

“Die Kunst der Klavierzerstörung“
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Gunnar Schmidt
08.10.2014, 6.30 pm
In German, no registration required, free entrance

Exhibition catalogue on sale at Mudam Boutique
Damage Control: Art and Destruction since 1950
Published by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
In association with DelMonico Books/Prestel
Texts in English by Kerry Brougher, Russell Ferguson, Dario Gamboni
224 pages, 50 €

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MARTINE FEIPEL & JEAN BECHAMEIL: MANY DREAMS
LOCATION: PARK DRÄI EECHELEN
11/07/2014 - 21/09/2014

This summer, the esplanade in the Draï Eechelen park will feature the artwork Many dreams by the Luxembourg artist duo Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil. It is the first time this major sculpture will have been presented in Luxembourg after having been shown in Belgium (Beaufort04 - Triennale of Contemporary Art by the Sea) and France (in the park of the Château d’Avignon and at the Pavillon Vendôme – Centre d’art contemporain in Clichy). Taking the form of a shell of a 1950s bus in a synthetic material with the look of stone, the work merges in with the verdant park environment (that offers a panoramic view of Luxembourg city centre) as if time had gradually fossilized it. It invites us to experience the feelings that overcome us “when we are alone in front of the sea or a vast landscape.”

Artworks by Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil are always immersive, questioning the perception we have of external and internal spaces and thereby inviting us to undergo a perceptual experience of them before turning our gaze on our own desires and expectations. In 2011, with the installation Le Cercle fermé (2011) that was produced for the Luxembourg pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale and presented at Mudam during the exhibition Atelier Luxembourg (2012–2013), we had an accurate representation of the artists’ interest in the question of the perception of habitation spaces in both a material and a symbolic sense. In the case of Many dreams, Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil invite us to examine everyone's own mental space by particularly addressing the related themes of travel, the unknown and desire. It puts the viewer in a contemplative and paradoxical state by providing, as the artists point out, “a dreamlike vision of our aspirations mingled with their incompleteness, ultimately referring us back to the vulnerability of all things.”

Image: Arnold Odermatt, Stansstad, 1958. Gelatin silver print, 30 x 40 cm © Urs Odermatt, Windisch. Courtesy Galerie Springer Berlin

Press Contact
Valerio D’Alimonte, v.dalimonte@mudam.lu, t +352 45 37 85 633

Mudam Luxembourg
Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean
3, Park Dräi Eechelen, L-1499 Luxembourg-Kirchberg
Opening hours
Wednesday - Friday: 11 am - 8 pm
Saturday - Monday: 11 am - 6 pm
Closed on Tuesday
Entrance fee
Adults 5 €
Under 26 years old, groups 3€
Mudami card (valid 1 year for 2 persons) 50 €
Under 21 years old free
Students under 26 years old free
Wednesday, 6 pm - 8 pm free

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