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Almond, Darren: All Things Pass

Almond, Darren: Terminus

Almond, Darren / Blechen, Carl: Landscapes

Andreani, Giulia

Appel, Karel

Arnolds, Thomas

Brown, Glenn

Brown, Glenn: And Thus We Existed

Butzer, André

Butzer, André: Exhibitions Galerie Max Hetzler 2003–2022

Chinese Painting from No Name to Abstraction: Collection Ralf Laier

Choi, Cody: Mr. Hard Mix Master. Noblesse Hybridige

Demester, Jeremy

Demester, Jérémy: Fire Walk With Me

Dienst, Rolf-Gunter: Frühe Bilder und Gouachen

Dupuy-Spencer, Celeste: Fire But the Clouds Never Hung So Low Before

Ecker, Bogomir: You’re Never Alone

Elmgreen and Dragset: After Dark

Elrod, Jeff

Elrod, Jeff: ESP

Fischer, Urs

Förg, Günther

Förg, Günther: Forty Drawings 1993

Förg, Günther: Works from the Friedrichs Collection

Galerie Max Hetzler: Remember Everything

Galerie Max Hetzler: 1994–2003

Gréaud, Loris: Ladi Rogeurs  Sir Loudrage  Glorius Read

Hains, Raymond

Hains, Raymond: Venice

Hatoum, Mona (Kunstmuseum
St. Gallen)

Eric Hattan Works. Werke Œuvres 1979–2015

Hattan, Eric: Niemand ist mehr da

Herrera, Arturo: Series

Herrera, Arturo: Boy and Dwarf

Hilliard, John: Accident and Design

Holyhead, Robert

Horn, Rebecca / Hayden Chisholm: Music for Rebecca Horn's installations

Horn, Rebecca: 10 Werke / 20 Postkarten – 10 Works / 20 Postcards

Huang Rui: Actual Space, Virtual Space

Josephsohn, Hans

Kahrs, Johannes: Down ’n out

Koons, Jeff

Kowski, Uwe: Paintings and Watercolors

La mia ceramica

Larner, Liz

Li Nu: Peace Piece

Mahn, Inge

Marepe

Mikhailov, Boris: Temptation of Life

Mosebach, Martin / Rebecca Horn: Das Lamm (The Lamb)

Neto, Ernesto: From Sebastian to Olivia

Niemann, Christoph

Oehlen, Albert: Luckenwalde

Oehlen, Albert: Mirror Paintings

Oehlen, Albert: Spiegelbilder. Mirror Paintings 1982–1990

Oehlen, Albert: Interieurs

Oehlen, Albert: unverständliche braune Bilder

Oehlen, Pendleton, Pope.L, Sillman

Oehlen, Albert | Schnabel, Julian

Phillips, Richard: Early Works on Paper

Prince, Richard: Super Group

Reyle, Anselm: After Forever

Riley, Bridget

Riley, Bridget: Circles and Discs

Riley, Bridget: Paintings and Related Works 1983–2010

Riley, Bridget: The Stripe Paintings

Riley, Bridget: Paintings 1984–2020

Roth, Dieter & Iannone, Dorothy

Scully, Sean: Dark Yet

True Stories: A Show Related to an Era – The Eighties

Tunga: Laminated Souls

Tursic, Ida & Mille, Wilfried

de Waal, Edmund: Irrkunst

Wang, Jiajia: Elegant, Circular, Timeless

Warren, Rebecca

Wool, Christopher: Westtexaspsychosculpture

Wool, Christopher: Road

Wool, Christopher: Yard

Wool, Christopher: Swamp

Wool, Christopher: Bad Rabbit

Zeng Fanzhi: Old and New. Paintings 1988–2023

Zhang Wei (2017)

Zhang Wei (2019)

Zhang Wei / Wang Luyan: A Conversation with Jia Wei

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Elmgreen and Dragset: After Dark
Texts Francesco Bonami, Tian Wu, Zian Chen, Alvin Li, conversation between Elmgreen & Dragset and Francesco Bonami


Chinese / English
Softcover
20 x 27 cm
272 pages
175 color illustrations
978-3-947127-41-2
35.00 Euro


 

“Back in 1994, we met for the very first time on the basement dancefloor of that club in Copenhagen. The velvet-seated environment and the euro-trash pop hits blasting out of the loudspeakers all night long made both of us feel slightly lost and out of context with our multi-colored hairdos and Dr. Martens boots, regularly listening to bands like Sonic Youth or Nirvana. Like two misfits, we left the club together.” —Elmgreen & Dragset

 

Elmgreen & Dragset like to transform the white cube into a resonance chamber that speaks to our real life experiences. For their show in Hangzhou’s contemporary art center, By Art Matters, they installed a club space in the ground floor, a meticulously designed and lighted environment in which they strategically placed sculptural works: a monochrome bottle shelf filled with rows upon rows of the same milky liquid, a modernist circular bar that turns the tables on customers who could be served only if there was an entry to its center, a cute terrier on a merry-go-round catering to the social media audience, below the ceiling a tight-rope walker hanging from a single hand with strange calm. These works appeared like misfits in the party atmosphere of the opening, but then during exhibition times the viewer becomes the intruder in eerily silent rooms. Upstairs the exhibition spaces were divided into several deeply symbolic tableaux of bronze figures painted in plaster white: kids playing silent games hidden behind bulky virtual reality headsets or staring out of the windows while offline, a tennis parable that has one youth cradling the winner’s trophy and the other lying face down on his half of the court, a maid watching over a children’s bed on which a vulture perches, and more.


The book documents these complete environments in gorgeous spreads, along with shots of earlier installations for context. The texts explain both the history of the artists’ work and how it interrelates with Asian expressions of a gay subculture, alongside an interview with the artists who reveal the deeply personal layers behind the pieces: “Club scenes have been central to many minority groups in defining themselves, in gathering strength and belief in their own worth and power and giving people a sense of belonging . . . Realizing a club project now, after Covid and all the lockdowns that have taken place all over the world, has been very different and new for us. Our After Dark installation almost feels like a memorial to a different time.”


BATTLING WITH ARCHITECTURE
(excerpt from the conversation between Elmgreen & Dragset and Francesco Bonami)


FB: What would be the ideal soundtrack for the show?


E&D: The sound of the “in-between”: the sound of a hoover maybe, of preparation, of cleaning up and checking the sound system, the sound of ordinary activities we are not supposed to see. Or, like for many of our exhibitions, Brian Eno’s Music for Airports would atmospherically be a pretty good fit.


FB: It’s a show about music but the works are mute. Can a sculpture or a painting compete with the emotional power of a song?


E&D: We are convinced that sculptures have voices, but whispering ones, so you hardly notice them. Some sculptures tell really dull stories or are not very articulate, while others have these extremely seductive voices that will stick in your head for a long time.


FB: Can you try to tell me how your brains work? What is the process towards a work? Where do you start?


E&D: Our brains are constantly trying to connect to each other. For obvious reasons (us being humans and not machines) this does not fully work, but in the process of connecting and disconnecting, something interesting occasionally happens. Our whole process is communication, from beginning to end. (Look at what we are doing right now, with you!)


FB: How much does architecture interfere with your work?


E&D: A huge amount. We’re constantly battling with architecture. Sometimes it’s a joyful play-fight, at other times we’ll feel the urge to go full de-construction. Usually, though, it’s the starting point for our exhibition concepts, as we often take into account the existing characteristics of the particular spaces we’re working with—looking at how such spaces are used, by whom and in what ways—to formulate ideas that either resonate with or rebut ingrained associations with a specific site. It’s interesting how the aesthetics of a certain space can make you feel or behave in particular ways. A room with grand architectural features might change how you walk around it. If we were to transform such a space into a domestic setting, for example, as we did for the Danish and Nordic Pavilions for the Venice Biennale in 2009 and later at the V&A in London in 2013, it might make visitors feel like detectives looking for clues in someone’s private sphere or like uninvited guests in that home. We have found that by modifying the architectural features of a gallery space and by moving away from the white-cube aesthetic, it’s possible to alter how people interact with art.

 

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In collaboration with BY ART MATTERS