Discursive Painting from Albers to Zobernig at the MUMOK

Written by Anton Zwieg Friday, 10 February 2012 21:16

VIENNA.- “Pictures about Pictures. Discursive Painting” is the title of the exhibition of the Daimler Art Collection in the MUMOK. Around 130 works will be presented ranging from classical modernity and post-war avantgarde through European Zero and minimalism to international contemporary art. In addition to paintings and drawings the presentation in the MUMOK also includes installations and video art. Together, the selection of works represents the main focus of the Daimler Art Collection in the area of abstract avantgarde and reduced/conceptual tendencies from the Bauhaus on up to current international, contemporary art.

The presentation in the MUMOK is organized in thematic fields that stage discursive references to historical and current positions: Bauhaus and De Stijl; Hard Edge and New Color School USA; constructive and concrete tendencies; European Zero avantgarde; minimalism and aspects of design; Neo Geo and international contemporary art. Thus the show brings together approximately 75 artists from some twenty countries. The works span a period of a hundred years, from 1908 (Adolf Hölzel) to 2010 (Andreas Schmid).

As the title of the exhibition–“Pictures about Pictures. Discursive Painting”–suggests, the accent is not on a museum-like categorizing of styles and isms. The presentation is, rather, an attempt to make visible the dialogic references of the works to each other and the discursive interrelationships of individual notions of form and content. Here, art history should no longer be seen from a perspective of ‘invention’ and ‘progression’ but should be imagined as an argumentative union of pictures in temporary contexts and transitional forms.

Alongside classics such as Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer, Jean Arp, Adolf Fleischmann, Hermann Glöckner or Georges Vantongerloo, exemplary works and work groups from the 1960s to the 1990s by Absalon, John M Armleder, Jo Baer, Daniel Buren, Andre Cadere, Enrico Castellani, Gene Davis, Helmut Federle, Günter Fruhtrunk, Rupprecht Geiger, Poul Gernes, Donald Judd, John McLaughlin, Francois Morellet, Jeremy Moon, Olivier Mosset, Julian Opie, Gerwald Rockenschaub and Heimo Zobernig will be presented. An overview of current tendencies in abstractgeometric, minimalist art is present in the works of, amongst others, Krysten Cunningham, Stephane Dafflon, Maria Eichhorn, Liam Gillick, Nic Hess, Jim Lambie, Mathieu Mercier, Sarah Morris, Danica Phelps, Andreas Reiter Raabe, Ugo Rondinone, Tom Sachs, Pietro Sanguineti, and Katja Strunz.

The Daimler Art Collection was started in 1977 and currently includes about 1800 works by German and international artists. The collection focuses on abstract and geometrical pictorial concepts, from which it derives its distinctive character. The starting-point is fundamental tendencies in 20th century Modernism in south-west Germany, and this basic direction has been expanded in the 1990s by adding exemplary works by European and American artists.

One future policy will be to acquire a representative selection of photography and media art. A changing selection from the collection is accessible to Daimler employees and the public at the company's various locations. As well as this, the Daimler Art Collection started as early as the 1980s to acquire a high caliber ensemble of sculpture by contemporary artists, and this is a striking feature of the company's Stuttgart, Sindelfingen, Ulm and Berlin premises.

Mumok may sound like a character from Star Wars, but unless you're a performance artist - in which case anything goes. The 'Museum Moderner Kunst' is one of the main draws of the vast Museumsquartier, and it makes for a refreshing change if you're overdosing on baroque beauties. The sleek edifice houses some 9000 treasures, including paintings by Mondrian, Ernst, Bacon, Kokoschka and Magritte, as well as sculptural gems by Picasso and Giaccometti.  Visit The MUMOK at : www.mumok.at/

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