Urs Fischer: Noisette, 2009
Collection of Anne Faggionato, Monaco
© Urs Fischer
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Riotous Baroque: From Cattelan to Zurbarán
SWITZERLAND
ZURICH • Kunsthaus • 1 June - 2 September 2012
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According to curator Bice Curiger, the Riotous Baroque confronts pictures from the seventeenth century with art of the present day. The exhibition focuses on the ‘riotous’ aspect and the proximity to life that is a recurring theme in the literature on the Baroque. It sets out to extricate the concept of the Baroque from its conventional context within the history of style and to distance itself from formal clichés. Riotous Baroque is not about pomp, ornament and gold, but rather ‘manifestations of precarious vitality’ – a vitality that is lived, rediscovered or lost, projected and threatened by death. The intention is not to proclaim a neo-Baroque stylistic tendency in contemporary art. In an age of stylistic scepticism, art today is seeking to gain traction with reality and touch upon existential issues.
Featuring Baroque works by, among others, Pieter Aertsen, Jan Steen, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Valentin de Boulogne, Jacob Jordaens and from the present by Nathalie Djurberg, Maurizio Cattelan, Paul McCarthy, Dana Schutz, Marilyn Minter, Cindy Sherman, Urs Fischer, Tobias Madison and Oscar Tuazon.
Urs Fischer’s Noisette (image at left), a highly realistic silicone tongue that, activated by motion sensors, pokes out through a hole in the wall, waggles gently for a moment in front of the surprised, smiling visitors, before disappearing back into its recess. In the Baroque north, in particular, the stuck-out tongue was a favourite gesture within the basic vocabulary of bawdy, cheeky, coarse, playfully rule-breaking expressions.
Kunsthaus Zurich Website
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Kunsthaus
Heimplatz 1
8001 Zürich
Switzerland
Tel: (41) 1 253 84 84
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