Salon

November 16 - December 16, 2017

Zürich

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.

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About the Artists

‘Creed is a social artist; the true magic of his work lies in the way it interacts with people and places.’—Jonathan Jones, ‘Martin Creed’s stairway to heaven,’ in The Guardian, London, UK, 1 August 2011, ill. (on Work No. 1059)

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 of Minimalism with the spontaneous ethos of the Beat Generation, and are always distinguishable by their often unorthodox—always joyful—approach to color and form.

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, California in 1939, Jackson first came to international attention with a major presentation of his installation works at the Menil Collection, Houston, in 1988, followed by the 1992 exhibition, ‘Helter Skelter,’ at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.Jackson’s work is process-oriented, and the structural aspect of his installations involves a high level of craftsmanship and engineering. However, the final application of paint is generated through an automated process which Jackson calls ‘activation.’ He equips his ‘painting machines’ with a network of pipes and hoses which, when deployed, cause violent eruptions of paint that immerse the work and surrounding area. The finished installations remain in the aftermath of this extreme and unpredictable performative action.

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 found objects is informed by her own position as an artist located between geographic and social milieus. Her way of working is exploratory: surveying, looking, collecting, and transforming, as she repositions the viewer’s relationship with the object and initiates a dialogue between metaphysical and material pursuits.

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 by using unorthodox materials such as bodily fluids and food. He has since become known for visceral, often hauntingly humorous work in a variety of mediums—from performance, photography, film and video, to sculpture, drawing and painting.

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.

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, he interrogates the complex aspects of identity construction through his multi-disciplinary practice; encompassing film, photography, sculpture, performance, ceramics and multi-channel video installations, which all emphasize the social interrelation of the protagonists, as well as physiological aspects of musical perception.

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 an immense diversity and breadth, producing books, graphics, drawings, paintings, sculptures, assemblages, installations, audio and media works involving slides, sound recordings, film and video. He also worked as a composer, poet, writer and musician. He often collaborated with other artists, subverting the principle of authorship. Those partners included such significant figures as Richard Hamilton, Emmett Williams, Arnulf Rainer, and Hermann Nitsch. But it was Roth's long and symbiotic collaboration with his son, artist Björn Roth, that stands as testament to the enormous and enduring potency of his restless, relentless process.

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, plaster and cement. These constructions were often painted in industrial or vibrant colors, the seams of their construction left at times visible, revealing the means of their making.

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, installation and sculpture—Maiolino relentlessly explores notions of subjectivity and self.

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