Urs Lüthi: Just Another Dance

Urs Lüthi
Just Another Dance
Opening: April 20, 6-9pm

The Swiss-born Munich-based artist Urs Lüthi is well known and often exhibited in Switzerland, Italy and Germany, however he is not shown as often in France. Just Another Dance, an exhibition composed mostly of new pieces, some of which revisit his work, is his most important show in France to date. Urs Lüthi’s new pieces have been partly produced by the Centre culturel suisse.

Since the late 1960’s, Urs Lüthi has been developing his practise based on self-portrait, thus exploring multiple aspects of human nature. In Just Another Dance, Urs Lüthi’s new pieces form or are part of series he initiated during various periods of his life. He has developed some of these pieces, such as Spazio Umano, Remains of Clarity - (Flowers) and (Thousand or more Images), or in some cases imagined a new version for them—as with The Numbergirl, seen trough the pink glasses of desire from the Trademark series. Urs Lüthi is thus constantly staging his own body and reconsidering his pieces through time. For the CCS, he also created a device consisting of a new spatial articulation of the room and stripes painted directly on the walls.

“The foundation of my work is the human condition. My conception arose in the mid 1960’s. It is based on the conviction that one can only experience the world and understand it in a subjective way. I don’t believe in subjectivity and, as part of a radical approach, I’ve taken myself as the subject of my art ‘as mirror of the universe.’” Urs Lüthi

From his first solo show at the Mäder gallery in Bern in 1966 to Just Another Dance at the Centre culturel suisse in 2018, Urs Lüthi has been the subject of over 190 personal exhibitions. He has taken part in 350 group shows in locations ranging from the Zurich Helmhaus in 1968 to Kassel’s documenta 6 in 1977; from the Sydney Biennale in 1978 to Paris’ Pompidou Centre in 1981; from the 49th Venice Biennale’s Swiss Pavilion in 2001 to the Punta della Dogana in 2018. Urs Lüthi was born in 1945 in Kriens and is based in Munich. 45 monographs are dedicated to him, all of which are listed on his website, ursluethi.com.

Artist’s website 
 

Also on display in the courtyard gallery:
Rosa Brux with Archives contestataires
April 21–June 3, 2018
Essayer encore, rater encore, rater mieux
(Try again, fail again, fail better)
With: Messageries Associées, Studios Lolos, Wages For Wages Against, A26N, Galerie Gaëtan, Carole Roussopoulos, Diane Spodarek, Galerie Aurora, Tréteaux Libres, François Bertin, Thomas Hirschhorn, Groupe 5, Patricio Gil Flood, Narcisse Praz, Carlo Tacconi, Oraibi + Beckbooks, Tamas St. Auby, Interfoto
Opening: April 20, 6-9pm

The political and social changes that occurred in Switzerland from 1968 onwards are seen as essential landmarks for understanding the evolution of art as well as art’s links with counter-culture. Associating activist archives and artistic practises, the exhibition is an opportunity to examine the links between art and activism.

“To face up to the inertia and conformism of institutions in which they did not recognize themselves, different independent movements organized initiatives in Geneva to build and experiment with new forms of struggles and alternatives. In the 1960’s until the end of the 1980’s a plethora of actions were initiated—in an often tense context between the authorities on the one hand and the art and activist scenes on the other. Within the framework of the exhibition, Rosa Brux and Archives contestataires join forces to lay out the complex relationships linking militant-actions-produced documents and artistic-processes-resulting pieces. The exhibition thus looks to prolong the prospects of transversality that were initiated by the ‘years 1968’ movements. As for them, iconographical and documentary sources presented at the CCS unearth some repressed, neglected or simply forgotten aspects of protest history. Inspired by a famous quote by Samuel Beckett, the exhibition’s title indicates a will to break up with the failure and success categories that are too often at play when it comes to evaluating protest movements. The title also pays tribute to the vagaries of activism as well as to everyday micro-resistances, which are sometimes overshadowed by greater collective actions.” Rosa Brux and Archives contestataires

Rosa Brux is an independent non-profit art venue running since 2012. Its activities are rooted in the understanding of art that is critically engaged with political and social issues. Conceived as a new type of institution, Rosa Brux provides an informal relationship between artworks and audience, leading to discussion, learning and experimentation.

The Geneva-based Archives contestataires association aims at collecting, preserving and taking inventory of archives stemming from the social struggles of the second half of the 20th century: at putting these archives at the disposal of the public as well as researchers and adding value to its funds.

Batia Suter
June 9–July 15, 2018
Sole Summary
Opening: June 8, 6-9pm
Batia Suter draws from a vast collection of images she gathers and then reworks, sequences, puts and glues together. The installation Batia Suter made for the Centre culturel suisse’s courtyard room was built from the collection of curio and paintings that belonged to her aunt. A secretary in Zurich University’s department of mathematics, this aunt obsessively collected and cherished a variety of things throughout her life. Despite its systematic appearance, this panorama is deprived of any exhaustive pretention. Rather, it meets a need. The panorama can be seen as an inversed mould, a kind of plaster cast revealing the artist’s perplexity.

The exhibition is both a tribute to and an investigation into this complex and fascinating personal cosmos. It results in a kaleidoscopic travel through time, culture and tastes based on the structural power of the world of image and object.

Batia Suter (born in 1967 and based in Amsterdam) studied design in Zurich as well as art and typography in Arnhem. She has been taking part in exhibitions since 1996. In 2007, she published the first volume of the imposing and well-received Parallel Encyclopedia (Roma Publications), followed by another volume in 2016, when she participated in the Rencontres de la photographie in Arles. As one of the short-listed artists for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, she exhibited at the Photographers Gallery in London in 2018, as well as at the Swiss Art Awards in Basel.

Also see: Radial Grammar, another solo show by Batia Suter, from May 26 to August 26 in Bal in Paris, in association with the CCS.


All exhibitions are curated by the CCS codirectors Jean-Paul Felley & Olivier Kaeser.