Exhibition program 2018 Kunsthaus Zug
Director, Program Manager Dr. Matthias Haldemann Collection Curator Dr. Marco Obrist Organisation, Administration Raffaella Manferdini Doris Gysi Art Education Sandra Winiger Friederike Balke Curatorial Assistant Samira Tanner Texts Melanie Kollbrunner Design l équipe [visuelle]
To live in a country where there is no humour is unbearable, but it s even more unbearable in a country where humour is needed. Bertold Brecht Refugee Conversations 1940/41
Vienna to Europe Klimt and Schiele to Léger and Klee in the Collection March 3 to June 10, 2018 The Kunsthaus Zug is opening its doors to its very own treasure chest. On display is the modern Viennese world in all its depth, before and after the First World War, in times of great joy and great despair. The wider European world outside of Vienna will also be shown, as will the free spirit of the world at large, which the Second World War threatened to eradicate. Works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch are examples of the cultural interactions between Vienna and other European centers. Jewelry, silver and ceramics, along with beaming landscapes and blooming gardens. The beauty of one of Gustav Klimt s dreamworlds wants to seduce whoever enters. Those who do will not just experience a rush of ecstasy, they will witness the fragility of man, seen for example in the group portrait with Arnold Schönberg by Richard Gerstl, or in the Expressionism of Egon Schiele or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Here, hate and fear are widespread. It s no coincidence that passages into the basement, where the treasures are kept, are being opened in 2018. The Stiftung Sammlung Kamm is the code to the vaults. The foundation owns the most significant art collection of the Viennese Modern Age in Europe outside of Austria, along with groups of works of French Cubism and German Expressionism. The foundation was founded in 1998 and has given its works to the Kunsthaus Zug as permanent loans. Here and there the collection provides evidence of the close friendship between the couple Fritz and Editha Kamm-Ehrbar, who resided in Zug, and the Viennese sculptor Fritz Wotruba. During World War II, he and his Jewish wife lived in exile in Zug. His work, his critique of the isolation from the Viennese art world and his opening up to Europe are keys to the collection of the Kunsthaus Zug. Two new additions to the house collection will also be given their due: The around forty works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Alfred Kubin, which the Kunsthaus Zug has newly received from the Zurich-based Werner Coninx Foundation as permanent loans. And the legacy of the superb American-Austrian artist Friedrich Kiesler (1890 1965), which is being presented for the first time in Switzerland, thanks to the joint efforts of the Kunsthaus Zug, the non-profit organisation Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft Zug and the Stiftung Sammlung Kamm to acquire this group of works. The Stiftung Sammlung Kamm is also celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, which is also the year of the 100th anniversaries of the deaths of both Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Groups of work by these artists will be on display. The Kunsthaus Zug will also present works by the designer and artist Koloman Moser and the architect Otto Wagner, both of whom also died 100 years ago. Curated by Matthias Haldemann and Marco Obrist
The Collection on the Collection Contemporary Interpretations of Historical Works June 23 to September 2, 2018 Summer is a time to look back, but also to look ahead. After their travels through time to Vienna at the turn of the century, visitors to the Kunsthaus Zug have arrived back in the present. During the exhibition, our treasure chest will become a workplace, a laboratory, where ambling and discussion are encouraged. Because the collection hasn t just been gathering dust. On the contrary, it has been expanding on its own: Every now and then the Kunsthaus Zug invited contemporary artists to take a look at the collection, choose a historical work and start a discussion by creating something new. There are works that have been created which breathe new life into the old ones. They highlight the topicality of canonical art and in this way underscore their universal validity. And, vice versa, that which is new receives historical depth. Bethan Huws, for example, chose a blue glass by the Viennese architect and designer Josef Hoffman and created a big new type of glass-light-art piece. Till Velten was interested in the story of the Viennese industrialist and Swiss emigré Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, whose silver shaving set can be found in the Kunsthaus collection just as easily as a group of sketches for the famous portrait of his wife, the Golden Adele by Gustav Klimt. Works by Heidulf Gerngross, Michael Kienzer, Pavel Pepperstein, Christoph Rütimann, Richard Tuttle and Heimo Zobernig are just the beginnings of a collection to the collection, created in free interpretation of historical works beyond art historical conventions. Along the same lines, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are putting their project about an open collection archive for the Kunsthaus Zug up for discussion: The Museum s Archive is a big and mysterious treasure trove for young and old, where hidden things are brought to light for a split second only to then submerge again in the protective darkness of the archive. This architectural art installation is in the service of one of the most important functions of a museum: The storage of and education through art. In the exhibition area, visitors receive additional insights into the educational projects of the Stiftung Sammlung Kamm since its inception and residence in the Kunsthaus Zug since 1998. Curated by Matthias Haldemann and Sandra Winiger
Péter Nádas A Writer on the Road June 23 to September 2, 2018 Another focal point in the summer exhibition is Péter Nádas photography, which he gifted to the Kunsthaus Zug on the occasion of his big exhibition in 2012. Many visitors might know Nádas from his award-winning literature. Currently on a book tour for his autobiographical fiction Aufleuchtende Details (Bright Details in English), the Hungarian Nádas is presenting two very different series of photographic works in Zug. A new group of works in the collection bears the same name as the title of his most recent book: Bright Details are what the visitor can discover in his entire photographic work light is a key theme with Nádas. It appears in the seemingly medievally painted, black and white photographs, heavy and dark. But it s also in the bright mobile phone images, a new medium with which he has been experimenting for a few years now. These images are more flat, but still colourful, vibrant, free and playfully cheerful. «How is consciousness created?» To answer this question, Nádas has prepared a set of clues that are actually just objects from everyday life. A pear tree, beans, clouds in the sky. Things he stumbles upon in his garden in Gombosszeg or in hotel rooms when he s travelling. Nádas memories show what it means to be a part of a culture and a history, to be a product of societal development. Nádas was born half Jewish in Budapest in 1942, right before the imminent German occupation. His photography spans a great period of time: From the postwar suffering of the population during the dictatorship up until the present. The exhibition, arranged by the artist himself, brings new details to light and engages them in a conversation with the new and colourful images. Nádas also gifted these to the Kunsthaus Zug and they are being made public for the first time. Curated by Matthias Haldemann
The Comedy of Being Art and Humour from Antiquity until Today September 23, 2018 to January 6, 2019 Maybe everything will be frivolous and fun in the museum space. Maybe it will only be a little bit crude. Maybe boisterous, maybe complete chaos. Now and then deeply sad. The Comedy of Being. This is the title of the last big exhibition of the year, which rests upon the work of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche describes the outrageousness of life as a comedy of being, which an individual can only cope with through laughter and dance. The Kunsthaus Zug is giving its visitors seven-league boots and sending them off through an art history of humour, carnival, comic and comedy, slapstick and satire: For the last six years, an in-house consortium of students and young scientists has been researching the interplay of art and humour, going back to Ancient Greece, taking a detour through the Middle Ages to the Reformation, and contesting the material battle of the last century and today. The art history of humour journeys through crude jokes made at court, laughter in the church, street theater and carnival. It takes us to humour that provokes and humour that entertains. Humour for protest and rebellion. Gender relations and social oppression, discussions about the body and death are constant presences through time and space. Whether satire or parody, ridicule and the grotesque have historically speaking always been used as an outlet against fixed and hierarchical systems of order and value. At the very least since the tragic attack on the editorial office of the Parisian satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the question of how to handle humour in a free democracy has been raised again. With over 300 works that span the time from antiquity to the present, and that include loans from institutions in Switzerland and Europe as well as the house-own collection, the exhibition aims to ask if there is indeed anything to laugh at in a museum. It is an experimental arrangement of antique vases, flyers, magazines, paintings, sculptures and videos: What may irritate one person might make another laugh out loud. Visitors will giggle, smirk, joke and possibly even roar with laughter when looking at the uplifting or bold humour of Bosch and Goya, Ensor and Klee, Daumier and Heartfield, Duchamp, Oppenheim and Warhol. Sometimes situational comedy and existential angst, lust and shame, joy and outrage stand close together, almost side by side. Even in art, whose creators are in the end laughing at themselves. Curated by Matthias Haldemann
Kunsthaus Zug Dorfstrasse 27 6301 Zug Phone +41 (0)41 725 33 44 info@kunsthauszug.ch www.kunsthauszug.ch and on Facebook Tue to Fri 12 noon 6 pm Sa and So 10 am 5 pm until February 18, 2018 Christa de Carouge March 3 to June 10, 2018 Vienna to Europe Klimt and Schiele to Léger and Klee in the Collection June 23 to September 2, 2018 The Collection to the Collection Contemporary Interpretations of Historical Works Péter Nádas A Writer on the Road September 23, 2018 to January 6, 2019 The Comedy of Existence Art and Humour from Antiquity until Today Are you a member of Kunsthaus Zug?