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Unlike the sculptures by his father Cy Twombly, who assembled them as if they were collages composed of found pieces, Alessandro Twombly’s (*1959 in Rome) works are organic-looking sculptures made from a single piece of material. They recall fossilized coral, hardened streams of lava, objects found on the beach, or statues of archaic divinities. As different as they are from one another in appearance, they all invoke the elementary forces of nature. Their dynamic shapes visualize the idea of metamorphosis, the eternal transformation that is the basis for growth. Marks of Twombly’s work are left on the surfaces of some of the sculptures, which are first cast in plaster or clay, and then in bronze or resin. In this survey of his work, which features Twombly’s sculptures from 1986 to 2016, one can see the processes and developments that have been inscribed in the material.
The diverse work of Belgian artist Fabrice Samyn often references masterpieces of art history. His compositions, installations, and performances explore grand metaphysical questions, combining conceptual rigor with spiritual sensuality. Against the backdrop of his art-historical references, Samyn was invited by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels to enter into a subtle dialogue with the masterpieces of the Old Masters as well as the Musée Magritte. With his fascination for the spoken word and everyday poetry, Samyn is in a tradition with fellow Belgian artist René Magritte, and he is equally successful in translating details from the paintings of the Old Masters into a contemporary visual language.
FABRICE SAMYN (*1981) is a painter, sculptor, graphic artist, photographer and performer. With this exhibition he has his largest presentation to date with over 70 works. He lives and works in Brussels.
Edward Hopper’s world-famous paintings articulate an idiosyncratic view of modern life. With his impressive subjects, independent pictorial vocabulary, and virtuoso play of colors, Hopper continues to influence to this day the image of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. He began his career as an illustrator and became famous around the globe for his oil paintings. They testify to his great interest in the effects of color and his mastery in depicting light and shadow. The Fondation Beyeler is devoting its large exhibition in the spring of 2020 to Hopper’s iconic images of the vast American landscape. The catalogue gathers together all of the paintings, watercolors, and drawings from the 1910s to the 1960s on display in the exhibition, and supplements them with essays focused on the subject of depicting landscape.
EDWARD HOPPER (1882–1967) is the master of American Realism. His paintings captured life during his era. His method of painting rapidly became the stylistic foundation of a type of American modernism. A source of inspiration for countless painters, photographers, and filmmakers, his body of work continues to be influential to this very day.
EXHIBITION
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel
January 26–September 20, 2020
The reader TEXT\WERK gathers scholarly contributions on the artistic and academic-essayistic works of the renowned media artist, director, and author Hito Steyerl (*1966). How does Steyerl’s writing inscribe itself into her films and videos? How do these in turn feed back into her texts and exhibition practices? Interdisciplinarily conceived between media, theater, and cultural studies as well as art history, this anthology provides the first analysis of this central aspect of Steyerl’s work and includes an interview with the artist. It also includes the current conditions of art reception in pandemic times. This publication was prompted by a digital workshop held in November 2020 in cooperation between the DFG Research Training Group "The Documentary: Excess and Privation" at the Universities of Bochum and Düsseldorf with the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen.
HITO STEYERL (*1966) is one of the most important contemporary artists. Her work reflects on the social role of art and museums, forms of presentation in the media, and critically examines the use of artificial intelligence. In 2020/21, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, together with the Centre Pompidou, Paris, showed her first retrospective.
Sun Yitian (*1991 Zhejiang) lives and works in Beijing. She studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and is currently pursuing her doctorate at Tsinghua University. Her works have been exhibited at the Yuz Museum Shanghai, UCCA Edge, and Esther Schipper Berlin, among other venues.
Pierre Huyghe (*1962, Paris, lives in Santiago, Chile) is a world-renowned artist whose works have been exhibited in numerous international institutions such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, MoMA in New York, and Kunsthaus Bregenz. He has received numerous awards, including the Nasher Prize (2017).