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 fundamental criticism of the '68 movement. From today's perspective, the technological advances were particularly momentous. The development of cybernetics, communication networks and computer systems enabled far-reaching networking and powerful data processing and made the exchange of information an important social and economic factor. The exhibition and publication look at the art of the 1960s and early 1970s from the perspective of systems thinking and understand it as communication and system criticism. Works of Minimal Art and Conceptual Art in particular were concerned with the principles of the linguistic communication system and with difference and repetition. Symbolism, seriality, regularity and the contextualisation of the architectural and institutional environment were further important characteristics. The works formally adopted the principles of systems thinking and put them up for debate in terms of content. Viewers had to take their own standpoints, both spatially and mentally, and thus became a decisive part of the works. 50 years later, systems thinking is more effective than ever and has become indispensable for understanding industrial societies thanks to digitalisation. Complex systems network knowledge, analyse data, control information flows and determine decision-making and production processes. They form our environment, in which we strive above all for system compatibility, availability and reach. The exhibition and the publication show representative works from the 1960s and 1970s together with contemporary art that deal with today's systemically relevant questions of processuality, data processing, information distortion and system compatibility. For these contemporary artists, digital systems and software are just as much a part of their tools as the principles of systems thinking. Both influence and control their formal and content-related decisions when they create works. They often thematise precisely this dependence on systems and codes and thus make their modes of operation visible. The book and the exhibition "Always different, always the same" itself form an open art-historical reference system and establish a variety of references between the different artworks and decades. Important themes relating to the relationship between subject, object, perception and environment can thus be experienced through the senses: 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