Toys Redux: On Play and Critique
30 May–16 August 2015
Opening: Friday, 29 May, 6–9pm
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst
Limmatstrasse 270
CH-8005 Zürich
Switzerland
Hours: Tuesday–Friday 11am–6pm,
Thursday 11am–8pm, Saturday–Sunday 10am–5pm
Cory Arcangel / Alex Bag & Patterson Beckwith / Judith Bernstein / Vittorio Brodmann / Marvin Gaye Chetwynd / Simon Denny / Harun Farocki / Jan Peter Hammer / Nic Hess / Danny McDonald / Dawn Mellor / Claus Richter / Tabor Robak / Timur Si-Qin /Michael Smith / Lily van der Stokker / Julia Wachtel / Hannah Weinberger
The group exhibition Toys Redux—On Play and Critique brings together artists who make creative use of formats and imagery from popular culture usually addressed to children or teenagers. Such adoptions and manipulations of motifs from video games, television shows, movies, and cartoons should not be seen as mere pop-cultural quotations: they simultaneously comment on the capitalist production of these consumer worlds. Their pop aesthetic and the promise of an “innocent” and playful universe of childlike fantasy contrast with the underlying reality of neoliberal advertising and marketing strategies. The thematic exhibition unfolds a dialogue between works by artists from several generations, including selected pieces from the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst’s own collections, and expands on one of the museum’s ongoing central themes previously explored in shows by Cory Arcangel (2005), Marvin Gaye Chetwynd (2007), and Alex Bag (2011) as well as Deterioration, They Said (2009).
Events:
Artist’s talk
Saturday 13 June, 1pm
Judith Bernstein in conversation with Raphael Gygax (curator, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst) and Judith Welter (collection curator, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst).
Performance
Saturday 13 June, 5pm
Claus Richter: Das schlaue Tier und seine Feinde (2015)
A book accompanying the exhibition with essays by Esther Buss, Alexander R. Galloway, Raphael Gygax, Hans Ulrich Reck, and Judith Welter as well as interviews with the artists will be published by JRP|Ringier.
The exhibition is curated by Raphael Gygax (curator, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst) and Judith Welter (collection curator, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst).
Director of the museum: Heike Munder
