“Think of this as a Window” at MUT, Modena
Think of this as a Window is the first exhibition of MUT, which symbolically inaugurates with a curated selection of artworks from the private collection of Mutina CEO, Massimo Orsini. The title – inspired by Cerith Wyn’s homonymous work – becomes the starting point of a show in which the window is not only an infinite space that opens to our eyes and questions, but also a path across time.
The exhibition develops over three rooms, like transitional chapters of an imaginary voyage through three fundamental genres of the historical artistic tradition: portrait, process and landscape. Along this path the works of twenty artists, among the major protagonists of the international scene, reveal different approaches to time: definite, eternal, symbolic, abstract, fluid, controlled, primordial, or specific. The theme of time is not so much the subject of the exhibition as an activator of reactions and connections.
In the first room, portraiture does not appear as mere reproduction of human features, but as depiction of personal psychologies and shared codes. Among these, the dates by On Kawara – stern and conceptual paintings – are a combined representation of his existing and being. These works connect with the self-portraits of Felix Gonzales- Torres, in which places and events processed by the artist’s memory trace his own self-image.
The room devoted to process, on the other hand, focuses on artists such as Fischli/Weiss and Sherrie Levine, who explore the limits and definitions of the artwork, through conceptual re ections on the systems and hierarchies that lie at the base of artistic creation.
Finally, the third room looks at landscape, from Hiroshi Sugimoto to Wolfgang Tillmanns, interpreting it as expression of a reality that is not necessarily physically represented, but comes to grip with existential space and the space of desire.
Think of this as a Window is an exhibition in which time interacts with the written word, with form, matter, light, colour and much more: it constitutes a structural compendium that reveals both the historical continuity of contemporary languages and the complex wealth and urgency of today’s reflections.
Works by: Etel Adnan, Vincenzo Agnetti, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Tacita Dean, Fischli / Weiss, Ceal Floyer, Francesco Gennari, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, On Kawara, Renato Leotta, Sherrie Levine, Marisa Merz, Cindy Sherman, Ettore Spalletti, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Wolfgang Tillmans, Goran Trbuljak, Franco Vimercati, Franz Erhard Walther, Cerith Wyn Evans.
at MUT, Modena
until 23 February 2017