Moment.Monument

Sculpture today – “Moment.Monument,” the book accompanying the exhibition of the same name at the Kunst Museum Winterthur, presents international positions in contemporary sculpture in the field of tension between permanence and transience. Its principal theme is thus the ambivalence between the traditional claim of the monument as a memorial on the one hand and the process-based approaches of sculpture today on the other. In contrast to avant-garde practice, artistic approaches no longer have to make a radical break with tradition but may draw on formal historical research as a matter of course and with equanimity. The handling of older positions is as comprehensive as it is innovative. This recourse is deepened by process-oriented approaches to the work, by novel materials and by the use of contemporary techniques. In addition, the artists extend the historical positions by charging the sometimes extremely self-referential formal inventions of the past with content or poetry. This gives rise to a pleasurable quoting of historical positions in order, as it were, to redefine the idea of the monument. Multi-layered strategies of narration and remembrance are always at work, opening the works of art towards the world as monuments of 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