Sculpture Today

This book on »Moment.Monument«, an exhibition at Kunst Museum Winterthur, presents inter­national positions of contemporary sculpture on the conflicting notions of duration and transitoriness. The exhibition addresses the contradiction between the traditional concept of the monument as a memorial and the processual approaches in contemporary sculpture. In contrast to avant-garde ideas, artistic approaches today no longer have to assert themselves as a radical break with tradition, but rather build on formal research that reaches into the past in a self-evident and calm manner. The approach to historical positions is broad, innovative, diverse and independent. It is further refined by process-oriented approaches, novel materials, and the use of contemporary techniques. In addition, artists expand the histor­ical positions through a content-related or poetic charging of the sometimes extremly self-referential earlier forms. In this process, the enthusiastic ­citation of historical positions also serves as a ­method for ­redefining the concept of the monument. The focus is always on multi-layered strategies of narration and memory that reveal art to the world – as monuments to a present that is as fleeting as it is fragile.

Artists:
Phyllida Barlow, Katinka Bock, Dora Budor, Isa Genzken, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mona Hatoum, Bethan Huws, Alicja Kwade, Manfred Pernice, Magali Reus, Thomas Schütte, Gabriel Sierra, Roman Signer, Simon Starling, Danh Võ, Erwin Wurm

Exhibition:
Kunst Museum Winterthur, 8/5–15/8/2021