Helmhaus
Zürich
|
Capital
Affair
Christoph Büchel Gianni Motti
August 23 - September 29, 2002
Preview: August 22, 2002, 6 pm
Helmhaus Zürich
Further details: http://www.helmhaus.org
E-Mail: info@helmhaus.org
Exhibition offices: Tel. +41-(0)1-251 61 77
|
Capital Affair
Christoph Büchel and Gianni Motti both cultivate an artistic praxis
essentially concerned with the production of cultural values and mass
communication. Invited by the Helmhaus Zürich, they have collaborated
on a
project, as they did earlier this year for the exhibition "Cadeaux
diplomatiques" at the Kunstmuseum Thun.
For their project at the Helmhaus, the two artists decided to use the
CHF
50,000 budgeted for their exhibition by hiding it in the galleries of
the
Helmhaus in the presence of a notary. The amount of the budget becomes
the
property of the person who finds it. Visitors do not find themselves
confronted with a work of art, which has a use and exchange value, but
rather with the actual production costs, that is, the budget of the
exhibition: a work of art that is not there.
Christoph Büchel and Gianni Motti thus create an encounter with
emptiness,
with a work whose existence is still potential. The exchange that takes
place among the visitors in the exhibition galleries becomes the raw
material of this artistic project.
The project not only poses the question of the value of art for society.
It also poses, more generally, the question of the essence and value of
art per se: what do we expect of an exhibition? Beauty, endorsement,
social and political relevance? Christoph Büchel and Gianni Motti's
project is a caesura in the conventional cycle of changing exhibitions.
Both generous and confrontational at once, the artists delegate
creativity
to the public. Thus activated, visitors generate their own performance.
The (supposed) absence of art is compensated by social contact, by the
traces left behind by the public, by mental and physical activities such
as the intense study of the empty galleries.
The question of money is a particularly explosive and political issue in
Switzerland, the country of bank secrecy known for its discretion in
dealing with finances. One week before the exhibition closes, on
September
22, 2002, the people of Switzerland will go to the polls to vote on the
use of the country's surplus gold reserves.
Christoph Büchel and Gianni Motti currently rank among Switzerland's
most
highly wooed living artists. With their conceptual approach, they
investigate the routine and ritualized workings of the "operating system
of art". To this end, they modify or abandon its customary territories.
Inventive and efficient, subversive and provocative, they operate in the
chinks between art and society in order to examine the premises and
possibilities of art and, in particular, the medium of the exhibition.
Simon Maurer, Curator, Helmhaus Zürich
Further details: www.helmhaus.org
E-Mail: info@helmhaus.org
Exhibition offices: Tel. +41-(0)1-251 61 77
|
|
