About
Hauser & Wirth Zürich is pleased to present our year-end group exhibition ‘Salon’, a curated presentation of modern masters and contemporary work. Over a period of four weeks, ‘Salon’ will transform the ground floor exhibition spaces into a series of intricate displays combining works by over 20 artists, classic pieces of furniture and books.
The centrepiece is Rodney Graham’s light box tableau vivant ‘Pipe Cleaner Artist, Amalfi, ’61’ (2013), which shows a fictional modern artist working on fantastical constructions made of pipe cleaners in his Mediterranean studio. Inspired by Man Ray, Jean Cocteau and Asger Jorn, ‘The Pipe Cleaner Artist’ harks back to a long-forgotten era invoking, according to Graham, ‘an image of a studio utopia in a period where modernism still seemed to hold possibilities’. Continuing with this theme, additional works examine craftsmanship and the sensibilities of the artistic material, from fabric and plaster to concrete.
Important ceramic pieces by Fausto Melotti and Ken Price, as well as Saskia Spender, Beate Kuhn and Johannes Nagel, offer another focal point. The Los Angeles-based artist Ken Price revolutionised the conventional understanding of ceramics in the 1960s. His works are influenced by traditional ceramic art from Japan and Pueblo pottery, but jazz and the alternative underground of the era were also central to the development of his distinct and diverse oeuvre.
In addition, ‘Salon’ presents works by artists including Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Martin Creed, Mary Heilmann, Richard Jackson, Bharti Kher, Anna Maria Maiolino, Takesada Matsutani, Fabio Mauri, Paul McCarthy, Pipilotti Rist, Dieter Roth, André Thomkins, Philippe Vandenberg and David Zink Yi.
A series of events will accompany ‘Salon’, beginning with the opening on Wednesday 15 November, which features live classical music presented by Dot Unplugged.
About the artists
‘Creed is a social artist; the true magic of his work lies in the way it interacts with people and places.’ Jones, Jonathan, ‘Martin Creed’s stairway to heaven,’ in theguardian.co.uk, London, UK, 1 August 2011, ill. (on Work No. 1059)
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Influenced by 1960s counterculture, the free speech movement, and the surf ethos of her native California, Mary Heilmann ranks amongst the most influential abstract painters of her generation. Considered one of the preeminent contemporary Abstract painters, Heilmann’s practice overlays the analytical geometries…
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A pre-eminent figure in American contemporary art since the 1970s, Richard Jackson is influenced by both Abstract Expressionism and action painting, exploring a performative painting process which seeks to extend the potential of painting by upending its technical conventions. Born in Sacramento,…
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Born in London in 1969, Bharti Kher’s art gives form to quotidian life and its daily rituals in a way that reassesses and transforms their meaning to yield an air of magical realism. Now living in New Delhi, India, her use of…
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Paul McCarthy is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artists. Born in 1945, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he first established a multi-faceted artistic practice, which sought to break the limitations of painting…
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Pipilotti Rist, a pioneer of spatial video art, was born 1962 in Grabs in the Swiss Rhine Valley on the Austrian Border and has been a central figure within the international art scene since the mid-1980s. Astounding the art world with the…
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The oeuvre of the Berlin-based artist David Zink Yi revolves around themes of creation, manifestation, and the construction of identity. Born in Lima in 1973, Zink Yi left Peru for Germany at the age of 16. Drawing inspiration from his own experiences,…
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Singular and mercurial, the oeuvre of the Swiss artist André Thomkins defies easy art historical categorization. The product of a capacious and supple imagination, it encompasses uncanny drawings, music, sculptures and wordplay, utilizing techniques such as anagrams and palindromes. Influenced by Surrealism…
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One of the most influential artists of the post-World War II period, Dieter Roth was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1930, to a German mother and a Swiss father, and died in Basel, Switzerland in 1998. Dieter Roth was an artist of…
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For almost 60 years, British artist Phyllida Barlow took inspiration from her surroundings to create imposing installations that can be at once menacing and playful. She created large-scale yet anti-monumental sculptures from inexpensive, low-grade materials such as cardboard, fabric, plywood, polystyrene, scrim,…
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Anna Maria Maiolino is one of the most significant artists working in Brazil today. Born 1942 in Italy, Maiolino’s practice expresses a concern with creative and destructive processes. Working across a wide range of disciplines and mediums—spanning drawing, printmaking, poetry, film, performance,…
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Post-war Italian artist Fabio Mauri’s practice encompasses performance, film, installation, found-object sculpture, mixed media works and theoretical writings to question readings of history and the associated power of language and ideology associated with the Second World War and the Holocaust. Sobering, direct,…
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Italian sculptor, painter and poet, Fausto Melotti is considered a pioneer of Italian art and is acknowledged for his unique contribution to the development of mid-century European Modernism. Coming of age in prewar Milan, and living through the horrors of the Second…
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