Sunday, 18 January 2009

ARTS ROUND UP: ZURICH

Every since the trip to Zurich at the end of last year I have been meaning to tell you some of the things I saw in the galleries there and of course as time has passed, more things have arrived in my inbox of an art world note that I have wanted to include on the blog. So:

KAREN KILIMNIK
At Galerie Eva Presenhuber was one of Kilimnik's installations full of drawings, paintings, sculpture, photographs and a video piece. The subject matter of her works were landscapes, castles, pedigree dogs and horses all things dear to my heart. For me, walking into the room, I felt like I had entered somebody else's castle of fantasy with only half the story of their life available for interpretation to try and work out the character of the person who had created all these things.



Was it a teenager deeply in love? An ironic hipster? Sometimes I wondered if really she could do better but was pretending that she couldn't. At the same time though to illustrate that kind of naivety resulted in some great images.

LUKAS WASSMANN
This was an exhibition of photography that we discovered by accident in Zurich as we walked along the Limmatstrasse to the Migros Museum at a place called BolteLang. The photographs which I think were mostly colour were pretty easy to describe - it was a large number of photos of Wassmann's muse and collaborator, dancer Eva Maria Kupfer.

What I found more interesting were the collection of books of his other work and commissioned photography for selected clients.



Anyway - Google him and check his website. There are loads more images and also he has a great links list.

IAN WALLACE
This exhibition was so horrible it made me really angry and throw acid in my own face. Super boring work from a nondescript looking man and just when I thought it was all over I turned a corner and there was more of it!

HEAD TO HEAD - POLITICAL PORTRAITS
At the Museum of Design was the best.
"Head to Head - Political Portraits" shows the communicative patterns that politicians - no matter whether they are currently in a campaign or long since in office - use to curry favor with the electorate. The exhibition offers insight into visual strategies for image making, gaining prestige, and demolishing opponents.
Four personalities from world politics - Lenin, Che Guevara, Yulia Tymoshenko, and Arnold Schwarzenegger - were selected to be presented in greater detail in this exhibition because of their iconographic significance.
In addition, several contributions from artists shed light on aspects of the political portrait that have never been seen in this way before. The paintings of the presidents of Zurich’s cantonal government are also being exhibited publicly for the first time, along with dozens of official portraits from heads of states from every continent that were made available especially for this project. The affirmative world of politicians is mirrored in biting satire and demolition.
"

A shame I can't find any decent picture of it. Seeing all the similarities in the image making from around the world in the political election posters and all the weirdo 'caring but strong leader smiles', the crazy hair styles of Yulia Tymoshenko and old body building posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The old Nazi posters were kind of chilling and there was some of the propaganda too that was dropped from planes over Germany at the time of WWII.

xx Lektrogirl

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