Love is Colder than Capital and Andy Warhol
Love is Colder than Capital
An Exhibition About the Value of Feelings
KUB Arena
Andy Warhol
Fifteen Minutes of Fame
February 2–April 14, 2013
Kunsthaus Bregenz
Karl-Tizian-Platz
6900 Bregenz, Austria
Love is Colder than Capital
An Exhibition About the Value of Feelings
February 2–April 14, 2013
The title of the big group exhibition at the Kunsthaus Bregenz Love is Colder than Capital has been filched: it comes from the play of the same name by the controversial post-dramatic stage director René Pollesch, whose works deal with the neoliberal exploitation of the private and the personal by economic interests. More clearly than ever, the progressive dwindling of manufacturing production and the steady rise of service-oriented industries call on the emotional commitment of workers, and make feelings—purportedly genuine or merely feigned—an increasingly integral part of immaterial, commodity-like products.
Emotion, passion, care, even love, are the ostensible themes of this Bregenz exhibition. At the same time, however, this essayistically conceived show never sidesteps the tricky ambiguities of such sympathy-based concepts. One cannot always tell with the exhibited works whether the supposedly romantic idea of “true” love is at stake, or rather a variant “tainted” by economic or other social aspects. At the latest, since the end of the first decade of this century it has become increasingly difficult to draw a line between what is one’s own and personal and what is public.
Against this background and the mutual interdependence of art and society, the exhibition raises questions such as: How do artists address the relation between emotion and economy? How do they reflect the ambivalence of personal and social empathy between the two poles of authenticity and staged seduction?
Many of the installations, objects, and videos were specially created for the exhibition. Major works that are already part of the canon of contemporary art, by Hans Haacke, Isa Genzken, and Cindy Sherman are also on show. Famous works by the legendary New York artist Keith Haring will constitute a historic highlight of the exhibition, works that gave expression to the relations between love, sexuality, and commerce in innovative pictorial compositions way back in the 1980s.
Participating artists: Neil Beloufa, Minerva Cuevas, Mariechen Danz, Isa Genzken, Hans Haacke, Keith Haring, Teresa Margolles, Ken Okiishi, Julika Rudelius, Yorgos Sapountzis, Cindy Sherman, Andreas Siekmann, Dirk Stewen, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Rosemarie Trockel, Cathy Wilkes.
KUB Arena
Andy Warhol
Fifteen Minutes of Fame
February 2–April 14, 2013
Andy Warhol (1928–1987) is one of the most influential 20th-century artists whose impact is still with us today. With his technique of serial silkscreen printing in the 1960s he turned the work of art into the perfect mass product, opening the art world to celebrity culture and relativizing the border between high art and mass art as no other artist has done.
“I’m really jealous of everybody who’s got their own show on television. I want a show of my own.” In the late 1970s, this self-confessed TV addict’s plans took on shape. Following the founding of his magazine Interview in 1969, his first foray into the media world, Warhol devoted himself between 1979 and 1987 to the ultimate mass medium, producing 42 of his own television programs. His first series, the ten-part TV journal Fashion (1979–80) restricted itself to the fashion world, but in his subsequent programs Andy Warhol’s TV (1980–83) and Fifteen Minutes (1985–87) broadcast by MTV, he brought on an impressive range of stars from fashion, music, film, art, and the gay scene: from members of The Factory, drag queens, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry, Paloma Picasso, Cindy Sherman, Keith Haring, and David Hockney to the fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto and film directors such as John Waters. The programs created a new principle. Translating a celebrity and lifestyle magazine into TV format, they gave insight into Warhol’s inimitable interviewing strategy and his cult of the surface.
Andy Warhol—Fifteen Minutes of Fame will present a representative selection from this less known complex of Warhol’s works. The exhibition title is based on Warhol’s famous remark of 1968: “In the future, everybody will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” Etienne Descloux and Oda Pälmke of the Berlin architectural practice PE-P will be designing a special exhibition architecture.
For further information: www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at
