Collecting for Tomorrow (part I)

The exhibition presents works that have joined Museion’s collection in the last years, as acquisitions, donations or long-term loans. They all tie in with the research themes pursued by the museum, such as the new directions in sculpture, and the exhibition brings to light the fact that traditional artistic categories no longer always exist separately from one another.

Boxbox (2009) by Klara Lidén MUSEION

LANGUAGE IN ART

The Language in Art section encloses artworks that belong to trends that are very different one from the other, in which written language plays a specific role. Language in Art introduces an aspect of hybrid forms between art and writing, between image and text, between the drawn line and writing, it constitutes a representative manifestation of modern and contemporary art.

The section sees conceptual positions such as the ones by VALIE EXPORT, Maurizio Nannucci and Haroon Mirza. The nucleus includes also narrative and political art forms or artworks that work with advertising principles. An important role is given by visual and concrete poetry, as much as by artworks of the Fluxus Movement, part of Museion’s collection thanks to the long term loan of the collection "Archivio di Nuova Scrittura".

Gibt es etwas, das nicht durch ein Bild/Zeichen ausgedrückt werden kann?/Does something exist that cannot be expressed by an image or a sign?

Valie Export 2008/2011

MUSEION

More than meets the eye (1987 - 2000) by Maurizio Nannucci MUSEION

More than meets the eye is a large installation made up of a blue and a red version of the same text. The vibrantly glowing red and blue color spaces generate between them a mixed purple zone. Like almost all of Nannucci’s texts, this one also consists of a (tautological) statement about the work itself, pointing out the optical effect produced by the neon light.

Journal (Berlin) (2006) by Nanni Balestrini MUSEION

Nanni Balestrini, poet, artist and writer, has had a profound influence on the development of Italian art and literature over the last 50 years. An attentive observer of the social situation, he creates novels, artist books and a multitude of visual poems. In these poems, newspaper clippings (images, letters and text) have been applied to a white background: new, unexpected meanings spring from these fragmented combinations that reflect the political and cultural climate of an era. These works, which are viewed as seminal pieces of the visual poetry genre, also reveal a central practice in Balestrini's oeuvre: collage.

Arbeit Macht Kapital (2004 - 2012)by Claire Fontaine MUSEION

ARBEIT MACHT KAPITAL (“Work produces capital” or “Work Power Capital”) is written in “K font” using fluorescent tubes. The name of this font pays homage to Franz Kafka and his character K, the protagonist of the unfinished novel The Castle (1926). This version of the work is a mockup of the original, sized according to the neon tubes used. The three words in the neon sign can be interpreted in different ways, depending on whether they are read singly, together, or as a sentence. The phrase, ARBEIT MACHT KAPITAL, which on one hand evokes the spectre of the concentration camps, comprises terms which are also in recurrent use in modern democracies.

Automation is Dead (2011) by Haroon Mirza MUSEION

In Automation is Dead the LED message, a clear reference to the artist Jenny Holzer, has been modified to generate a sound that accompanies another source of rhythm generated by the interference of an energy saving light bulb and a transistor radio. The message on the display indicates the death of the system designed to control the machines that perform human work.

LIGHT WORKS

The light work group has played a significant role in the Museion collection since the major exhibition dedicated to Group N and Group Zero (ENNE&ZERO motus etc.) in 1996. The light works that have been added since have repeatedly highlighted the group’s installation-based, and consequently hybrid nature that was evident right from the start in many works by Günther Uecker, Otto Piene, Heinz Mack, and Alberto Biasi to name just some of the representatives of the two artistic groups.

Overhead Projection (2006) by Ceal Floyer MUSEION

Lichtballett (Lichtkugel) (1961) by Otto Piene MUSEION

Piene’s “light ballet” - Lichtballet (Licht kugel), cannot be labelled as a sculpture in a traditional sense as it is an installation that possesses movement and an intrinsic time span—a characteristic it shares with video.

Spiral Betty (2010) by Rosemarie Trockel MUSEION

Spiral Betty by Rosemarie Trockel is a light work, but its title is also a play on words with an ironic reference to Robert Smithson’s gigantic Land Art work, Spiral Jetty (1970), and its form that implicitly refers to the female body.

Untitled (12NOG+C) (2008) by James Turrell MUSEION

James Turrell’s work is part of his untiring engagement with light. Light is not something that illuminates other things but a substance that reveals itself. Untitled (12NOG+C) is one of a recent group of works in which the artist explores the effects of light using holograms. Three-dimensionality is created here by the projection of light onto a picture-like body.

"Goodnight Eileen" from 'Here to Go' by Terry Wilson / Brion Gysin (1982) by Cerith Wyn Evans MUSEION

Cerith Wyn Evans’ installation featuring a lamp that pulsates in Morse, entitled Goodnight Eileen from ‘Here to Go’ by Terry Wilson/ Brion Gysin (1982) is a truly splendid light work that thematises the codification of language and our habits of perception.

Marquee (2008) by Philippe Parreno MUSEION

Philippe Parreno works with a variety of different media: with film, sculpture, performance, drawing, text, and with the exhibition itself as a medium. Marquee is one of a group of works resembling a projecting roof with lights like those sometimes found above entryways. This form of sculpture is integrated into real architecture, where it marks the transition into a fundamentally different perceptual space. There are also ironic connotations here of the glamourous sheen enjoyed by certain ideas about art.

M'illumino d'immenso (2005) by Mario Airò MUSEION

M’illumino d’immenso: the words of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s famous poem of 1917 have been translated into rhythm and light. The seven movements of the green laser reflect the phonetics of the text, namely the linguistic sounds created when the poem is read out loud. The vertical line rises in four movements then contracts before expanding horizontally in three echoing motions. The precise clarity of the green beam of light created by the laser is a physical representation of Ungaretti’s stark brevity.