Immer anders, immer gleich. Ein Versuch über Kunst und Systeme/ Always Different, Always the Same. An Essay on Art and Systems

What is Minimal? In the 1960s the art world’s interest in systems grew noticeably. It ran parallel to the social upheavals and the fundamental critique of systems voiced by the 1968 movement. From today’s perspective, technological advances proved particularly consequential. The development of cybernetics, of communication networks and computer systems made far-reaching interconnection and powerful data processing possible and turned the exchange of information into an important social and economic factor. Exhibition and publication consider the art of the 1960s and early 1970s from the standpoint of systems thinking and understand it as communication and as a critique of systems. Works of Minimal Art and Conceptual Art in particular engaged with the principles of the linguistic system of communication, and with difference and repetition. Sign character, seriality, rule-governedness and the contextualisation of the architectural and institutional environment were further important features. The works took up the principles of systems thinking formally and put them up for debate in terms of content. Viewers had to determine their own standpoints, both spatially and intellectually, and thus became an essential part of the works. Fifty years later, systems thinking is more effective than ever and, through digitalisation, has become indispensable to an understanding of industrial societies. Complex systems interconnect knowledge, evaluate data, control flows of information and determine processes of decision-making and production. They form the environment in which we strive above all for system compatibility, availability and reach. Exhibition and publication present representative works of the 1960s and 1970s together with contemporary art that addresses questions of process, data processing, information distortion and system compatibility that are systemically relevant today. For these contemporary artists, digital systems and software are as much a part of their tools as the principles of systems thinking. Both influence and steer their decisions of form and content when they create works. Often it is precisely this dependence on systems and codes that they make their theme, thereby rendering visible the way these operate. The book and the exhibition “Alway Different, Always the Same” themselves form an open art-historical system of reference and establish manifold connections between the various works and decades. Important themes surrounding the relationship between subject, object, perception and environment thus become sensually tangible: always different and yet always the same.

Artists:
!Mediengruppe Bitnik, Carl Andre, Art & Language, John Baldessari, Walead Beshty, Stanley Brouwn, Peter Buggenhout, Angela Bulloch, Hanne Darboven, Matias Faldbakken, Corsin Fontana, Wade Guyton, Bethan Huws, Iman Issa, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Yves Klein, Sol LeWitt, Piero Manzoni, Robert Morris, Charlotte Prodger, Ad Reinhardt, Michael Riedel, Robert Ryman, Jan Schoonhoven, Frank Stella, Sturtevant, Rémy Zaugg

Exhibition:
Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur, 30/6 – 11/11/2018