calendario eventi  :: 

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9/3/2008

Two exhibitions

IVAM Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia

Jean Tinguely

Jean Tinguely’s works are being shown for the first time in Spain. Seventeen years after his death, the Swiss iron sculptor and master of kinetic art is at the centre of a retrospective exhibition at the IVAM, Valencia.

Born in 1925 in Fribourg, Jean Tinguely spent his childhood and youth in Basel. That is where he got his schooling and, during the Second World War, his training as a window dresser. After the war he worked as an independent decorator and drew attention to himself with his spectacular designs for various shops. At the same time he attended courses at the School of Arts and Crafts in Basel and learned to adapt the use of daily objects in art in accordance with the ideas of the Bauhaus.

In 1952, Jean Tinguely and his first wife, Eva Aeppli, settled in Paris, where he rapidly fitted in with the artists’ crowd of the city. Tinguely created reliefs in which moveable white elements slowly rotated against a black background to create new compositions. These moveable images were entitled Méta-Malevich or Méta-Kandinsky and did in fact re-create the models of their titles in constantly new combinations.

With the Méta-Matics, the drawing machines, in 1959, Tinguely met with his first successes with the public. Each visitor to an exhibition could use one of the artist’s machines to produce his or her own individual abstract drawing defined by the parameters of the machine, a concept that aroused great interest. Artists such as Hans Arp or Marcel Duchamp reacted positively and recognized the new path that Tinguely had opened up in art.

The sixties saw the creation of large-scale sculptures made of scrap iron before Tinguely began to paint his sculptures a uniform black. It was now not so much the material itself or the fact that it came from a scrap heap that was given prominence, but rather the uniform sculptural effect. Movement that actually extended beyond the sculpture (and that was doubled in the water sculptures) was an integral part of the work.

Monumental works such as Hon (She), 1966, or Le Cyclop (The Cyclops), from 1969 on, were conceived in collaboration with other artists. Tinguely always worked together with his artist colleagues; Niki de Saint Phalle, Bernhard Luginbühl, Yves Klein and Daniel Spoerri were some of his important partners in art. The idea of artistic collaboration was central and essential to Jean Tinguely. The artist enjoyed collaborating with his artist friends on various occasions, not only on sculptures but also on productions for the theatre and exhibition concepts.

The seventies and eighties saw the creation of monumental sculptures such as the installation Grosse Méta Maxi-Maxi Utopia (Great Meta Maxi-Maxi Utopia), which he built in 1987 for the retrospective at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Further exhibitions of his machine sculptures were held throughout Europe, at the Tate in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Kunsthaus Zürich. Tinguely met with major success, as attested to by the public commissions he received – such as for the Fontaine Igor Stravinsky (Igor Stravinsky Fountain), which he built in 1983 with Niki de Saint Phalle for the square adjacent to the Centre Georges Pompidou.

After Tinguely’s death in 1991, his widow Niki de Saint Phalle came to an agreement with the healthcare firm of Roche in Basel by which the firm founded a museum and assured its running costs. In exchange, she made a donation to the museum from the artist’s estate. The Museum Tinguely was inaugurated in October 1996, its costs entirely financed since then by Roche.

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Until 25/05/2008

Joseph Beuys
Multiples

“If you have all my multiples, then you have me entirely.” Joseph Beuys

Of all the possible approaches to the work of Joseph Beuys (Krefeld 1921 – Düsseldorf 1986), the most enlightening and meaningful one is offered by his editions of objects, photographs, prints and films – in other words, his multiples. In their combinations they provide a concentration of the social and political thinking and creative activity of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. These groups of objects and documentary items must be considered as veritable “coded messages” which reveal and faithfully exemplify the ideas and work of this charismatic figure, especially his commitment to art capable of criticizing the art scene of his time and influencing and “healing” society.

Room 1 BEUYS AS BEUYS
“I am interested in the development of a real alternative to the existing systems in the West and in the East.” Joseph Beuys

The philosophical and aesthetic influences of Joseph Beuys and the profound interrelationship between the life and work of this “shaman”, influential teacher, social activist and creator of forms provide the starting point for this exhibition, which reveals the key elements in an iconographic and symbolic vocabulary that confronts the Kantian tradition and establishes the theoretical basis of “social sculpture”. This room, which includes works representative of his personal mythology, such as the felt suit or the sled, shows the role that drawing played as an instrument for reflection, and it focuses on key questions such as his sacramental view of nature or his predilection for materials that could be transformed.

Room 2 THE TRANSFORMATION OF ENERGY
“Felt and fat are not isolated objects; in themselves they are simply batteries which radiate thermal energy. The viewer is enveloped by the reach of that thermal energy, its form. This abolishes the age-old problem of art, the separation between subject and object, not de facto but in the experience of reception …” Joseph Beuys

A vital feature in Joseph Beuys’s artistic aims is the idea of the transformation of energy as an analogy of society’s capacity for change and healing, his most cherished undertaking. He used warm materials such as fat, honey, wax, oil or metal, which change when exposed to heat, not only to show his rejection of the idea of art as merchandise but also because of their suitability for representing transmission and reception as a natural phenomenon comparable to social processes. In these works Beuys identifies man as the activator of society’s consciousness of its time.

Room 3 DEFENCE OF NATURE
“Our relationship with nature is characterized by the fact that it is a thoroughly disturbed relationship. The result of this is that the natural foundation on which we depend is not only disturbed but is in danger of being completely destroyed. We are well on the way to destroying that basis completely by working with an economic system that is founded on unrestrained exploitation of that natural basis. Brutal exploitation is the obvious consequence of an economic system in which making a profit is the supreme guiding principle.” Joseph Beuys

Most of the works exhibited in this room document actions which Joseph Beuys performed in the natural environment. His actions are directly connected with the emergence of ecological awareness and with his view of nature as a spiritual substance, and they often take on a theatrical quality, such as when we find him sweeping a forest. The use of basalt and of spades and other agricultural implements, the inclusion of animals such as the hare (in which he saw himself) and the value he attached to trees, plants and, once again, natural substances such as water, oil or wine give his work an ethical dimension that goes beyond the bounds of art.

Room 4 BEUYS AS A SOCIAL REFORMER
“It is simply about this principle which is still too difficult for many people to understand, that art can no longer be art now if it does not get to the heart of our existing culture and bring about a transformation there […].” Joseph Beuys

All Beuys’s theories about art, his social ideas and his sculptural research come together in his most striking ideological undertaking: the expansion of individual consciousness by a collective commitment summed up in the maxim that “everybody is an artist”. His opposition to political forces by means of intellectual activities (writing, teaching, giving talks and so on) explains the extensive use of magazines, newspapers and printed “promotional” material in his work and justifies the introduction of the economic variable which determines the balance of forces in society.

Room 5 BEUYS AS ACTOR (PERFORMER)
AND SPEAKER
“For me, language is obviously the first kind of sculpture. One shapes thoughts in a medium of expression. The medium of expression is itself the language. One must learn to look at thinking in this way; people must learn to consider it as an artist looks at his work, considering its form, its proportions and its strength.” Joseph Beuys

This room is directly connected with the previous ones, functioning as a compendium in which we find some of the most valuable testimonies of Joseph Beuys’s activity, life and work: his films. His concerts, conversations and sit-ins, his cultural references, his personal view of the art world and also memories of those he admired (such as the film maker Ingmar Bergman, his friend Klaus Staeck, the publisher, or the Korean artist Nam June Paik) provide a conclusion for this exhibition, which sets out to accomplish a profound observation of the world of this artist who made his work a veritable “mission”.

Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno IVAM
Guillem de Castro, 118 - 46003 Valencia
Opening Hours:
Tuesday to Sunday: 10 am to 8 pm
Monday: closed
General entrance: 2,00 €
Students / Student card: 1,00 €
Retired people: Free entrance
Civic and cultural groups (advanced booking): Free entrance
Other groups: 1,05 € per person
Handicap: Free entrance

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