Museion presents
The power of photography. Works from the Museion collection
curated by Letizia Ragaglia
Exhibition opening 25/11/2016
On till 17/09/2017


Today everything exists to end in a photograph.

(Susan Sontag)

Museion takes visitors on a journey through more than 100 works by 30 artists from the 1960s to the present.

The works have been selected from Museion's collection of over 500 pieces - some of which joined it on occasion of exhibitions, while others belong to two major long-term loans - the Archivio di Nuova Scrittura belonging to Paolo Della Grazia, and the Enea Righi Collection.

The staging of the self and the human body, identity, and the sharing of the intimate, private sphere are just some of the topics explored in the new exhibition. These issues - highly topical in the age of social media and selfies - are examined in the light of works by artists of international standing, belonging to various generations, from Wolfgang Tillmans to Vanessa Beecroft, Gilbert & George, VALIE EXPORT, Michael Fliri and Nico Vascellari. A special section presented in the Study Collection and curated by Andreas Hapkemeyer is devoted to political photography in the broadest sense.

What strongly comes through in the show is just how much photography represents the fluidity of genres and media that characterises art in the contemporary period. This is also reflected by the presence of various sculptures and videos which forge a dialogue with the photographic works.

"Photographs are evidence not only of what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world." Photographic vision, and the new way of seeing things that photography offers, as described by Susan Sontag, infuse the work of Roni Horn (1955, USA), who opens the show. In Cabinet of (2002) the visitor is "surrounded" by 36 clown portraits hung on the four walls of the room. The clown's face emerges from a pale background, sporting a range of similar, yet different expressions, from playful to sinister. The viewer is invited to ponder the implications of this masked identity, and therefore to develop a new way of seeing things, without the benefit of existing knowledge.

When we look at images we automatically tend to categorise or classify them, in attempt to create order. Anything which does not look “normal” can be difficult to accept, and defined as deviant. This arena is the focus of the work of Zoe Leonard (1961, USA), in the exhibition with Preserved head of a bearded woman (1991). Here too, the individual represented is without an identity: five silver gelatin prints show various views of a bearded female head preserved in a jar, on display in a Parisian anatomy museum, the Musée d'Anatomie Delmas-Orfila-Rouvière as an example of "deviant biological forms".

Bodies or parts of bodies that arouse fear and revulsion, yet are strangely compelling, often feature in the works of Jana Sterbak (Prague, 1955). This is the case, for example, in Cone On Hand (1979-1996), a photograph of a bare arm that ends in an bizarre conical prosthesis formed by a tape measure, alluding to the standards the body is measured against in society. Sterbak also presents an object entitled Trichotillomania (1993-96), named after the obsessive-compulsive disorder in which sufferers feel an irresistible urge to pull out their hair.

Subverting social conventions and taboos is another theme common to many of the works in the show, such as those of Zanele Muholi (Durban, South Africa, 1972), a lesbian activist who trains her lens on aspects of the homosexual and transgender community, capturing private moments often judged to be out of bounds. In other cases the break with convention regards gender identity and cross dressing. This can be seen in “The King of Solana Beach”, 1974-1975 by Eleonor Antin (New York, 1935), which depicts the artist wandering round a town near San Diego dressed as a man. The exhibition also includes the video of the action. Dressing up and disguises are also a key theme for Michael Fliri (Tubre, 1978), who took inspiration from Antin for his work From the Forbidden Zone, a performance in which he was dressed as hybrid, monkey-like creature.

Both Antin and Fliri use photography as a hybrid medium to capture aspects of their actions. This is a strand that emerged in the 1960s, when the body of the artist was the focus of many historic performances and actions, such as those of Günter Brus (1938, Austria), one of the main exponents of Viennese actionism. In the work Selbstbemalung II, 1964, he uses his own body as a painterly canvas in a public performance. Brus's art can also be likened to the black and white photography of Arnulf Rainer (1929, Austria), who "overpaints" his self portraits to lend a dynamic feel to the instants captured.

The body is also considered in relation to space: VALIE EXPORT (1940, Austria) explores the fragmentation of the self in her Körperkonfigurationen, pieces in which she adapts her body to an architectural element such as a curb, the corner of a building or a stairway, highlighting how the body conforms to external factors. Her position also reveals her inner state of mind, feelings or emotional wounds. The theme of wounds and in particular child abuse is central to the work by Niki de Saint Phalle (1930, France) taken from the film Daddy (1972), in which the artist points a gun at the viewer.

From the 1980s onwards artists began to work with existing photographs, using photography as a narrative device to construct alternative takes on reality. Douglas Gordon (Glasgow, 1966), for example, in Hollywood Blind Stars Series takes photographs of 50s and 60s film stars, bought or found on the internet, and cuts or burns out the eyes and mouth, thus destabilising our vision and subverting the familial, adoring gaze usually reserved for Hollywood icons.

"There's a big difference between taking a picture and making a photograph" (Robert Heinecken). The very contemporary interest in photography as a source of serial, low brow images is the focus of the work “Lago Morto”, 2011, by Nico Vascellari (1976, Italy). The artist invited members of the public to capture images of the 2009 concerts of his band “Lago Morto”, using disposable cameras. All of the images, none excluded, appear in the work presented, which forms a sort of social punk sculpture.

The photographic works of Wolfgang Tillmanns (1968, Germany) – present in the exhibition with Bakerloo Line, 2000 and Adam's Crotch, 1991 - convey an idea of immediacy - a world accessed via images that is ongoing and open-ended. The German artist's approach can be said to reflect the rationale of the Museion collection: a fragmented, but also fluid set of artworks, constantly being staged and reworked to create new connections in new contexts. In the words of Letizia Ragaglia, director of Museion and curator of the show, at the same time the collection - independently of the advent of social media, but undoubtedly making use of it too - has to be accessible, shared with an audience that must be given the opportunity to engage with it,.

The "Photography and politics" section in the Study Collection
curated by Andreas Hapkemeyer

A special section presented in the Study Collection and curated by Andreas Hapkemeyer is devoted to political photography in the broadest sense. Starting from notions that can be traced back to Cubism, Dadaism, surrealism and Soviet posters, mass media materials cut out or used in collages resonate with their era and are developed to adapt to new social and historical contexts.The critical potential of the combination of photography and text is a specific trait of political art: it does not merely show something using an image, but sets out to point the finger in no uncertain terms. The works on display are arranged around the following themes: Information and agitation (John Heartfield, Klaus Staeck); The sexual revolution (Otto Muehl, Daniele Buetti); The poetic revolution (Michele Perfetti, Sarenco, Eugenio Miccini, Lamberto Pignotti, Paul de Vree); Concentration camps and memory (Heimrad Bäcker, Rossella Biscotti, Santu Mofokeng); The natural world and the technologized world (Gianpietro Fazion, Hans Glauber, Hamish Fulton, Walter Niedermayr), andThe globalized world (Olivier Menanteau, Matti Braun, Liu Ding, Brigitte Niedermair).

Featured artists XXXX

Study collection XXXX

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue in three languages (It/Ger/Eng) published by Museion with texts by Andreas Hapkemeyer, Letizia Ragaglia and Simone Menegoi.

Info
The power of photography. Works from the Museion collection
curated by Letizia Ragaglia
The Study Collection section is curated by Andreas Hapkemeyer
from 25/11/2016 to 17/09/2017

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm.
Thursdays 10 am - 10 pm with free admission from 6 pm and free guided tour at 7 pm. Every Saturday and Sunday, from 2 pm to 6 pm, "art dialogues" take place in the exhibition.
Closed Mondays.
Admission: full price € 7, concession € 3.50

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Piazza Piero Siena 1
39100 Bolzano

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Bolzano, 24/11/2016