Synopsis
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, visionary Geneva gallerist Pierre Huber seems to have had a crystal ball for what's destined to last in contemporary art. And when he's gazed into it in amassing his private collection, he's seen photography, contemporary Chinese art, abstract painting and other art forms. This catalogue, published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, gives others a glimpse of what Huber was seeing at the moment of inspiration: in America he found particular interest in appropriation art (Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler) and the wild California scene (Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Jim Shaw); closer to home, he acquired work by some of the most innovative German photographers (Thomas Ruff, Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth) and Swiss artists (Sylvie Fleury, Ugo Rondinone, Olaf Breuning). Abstract painting and contemporary Chinese art also make appearances in this impressive overview.
About the Author
Olaf Breuningn, born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland in 1970, has exhibited in numerous international group exhibitions over the last three years, including Missing Link at the Kunstmuseum Bern, Hypermental at the Kunsthaus Zurich, and Let's Entertain at the Walker Arts Center.
Sylvie Fleury was born in 1961, in Geneva, where she still lives.
Paul McCarthy was born in 1945 in Salt Lake City, Utah and he currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of Southern California. McCarthy's artwork was brought to public attention in the 1970s with his performance pieces and works in film. Since then he has experimented with sculpture, installation and inflatable objects.
Jim Shaw was born in Midland, Michigan, in 1952, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. In the 70s, he founded the band Destroy All Monsters (with Mike Kelley and other artists originally from the Midwest). Since mid-1980is, Shaw has produced paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures influenced by a variety of sources: dream imagery, pulp fiction, thrift-store painting, underground comics, and religious cults. His work has appeared in numerous solo shows worldwide and in group shows like the 2002 Whitney Biennial. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Candida Hofer was born in 1944 in Germany, and was a graduate of the Becher class at the Dusseldorf Art Academy.
"Thomas Ruff was born in 1958 in the small town of Zell am Harmersbach in the Black Forest of Germany, the fourth of six children and the son of a ceramist. In the early 70s he became interested in astronomy and then photography, acquiring first a small telescope and later his first camera. Introduced to minimal and conceptual art while a student at the Dusseldorf Art Academy, he was shocked to realize that the photographs he had been taking were only imitative and clichE. Soon after he was accepted into Bernd Becher's class, along with fellow students Candida H fer, Axel H tte and Thomas Struth. The Interiors series was begun in this academic context, the Portraits series a few years later. Ruff's first solo show took place at a Munich gallery in 1981. Within less than a decade, he was being included in international exhibitions such as the Aperto in Venice. One decade after that he was appointed professor at the Dusseldorf Art Academy and was the subject of a large-scale retrospective that toured Germany, Ireland, Norway, Italy, England and Portugal."
Cindy Sherman was born in 1954. She began her Film Stills series at the age of 23, gaining early recognition, and has followed it with remarkable experiments in color photography. Her art has won her wide recognition and praise, and been collected and exhibited by major museums throughout the world since 1980--key early shows included a first survey at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1982 and a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1987. Sherman is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and the Guild Hall Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Arts.
Thomas Struth was born in 1954 in Gelden, Germany, He studied painting with Gerhard Richter and photography with Bernd Becher at the Dusseldorf Art Academy. His work has been exhibited internationally at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Saint Louis Art Museum; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1997 he was awarded the Spectrum International Photography Prize.
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