Primary Gestures

Robert Rauschenberg, Mona Hatoum, Hassan Khan, Jana Sterbak, Terry Winters

From March 22 to August 30, 2019, the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung is presenting, under the title Primary Gestures, photographs and contemporary works in glass by international artists as part of its series of thematic exhibitions.

“Gestures” are movements of the body that serve as communication; they are small acts of mutual understanding and action that convey signs of friendship, respect, and empathy, but also of distance. In the early 1980s, the American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) traveled to China hoping to send that kind of sign, a gesture of interest in a distant and foreign culture. He saw international exchange as an opportunity to preserve peace in the world. Of the hundreds of color photographs he brought back from that trip, he selected 28 motifs and published them under the title “Study for Chinese Summerhall” (1983). They read like recordings of gestures from daily life, both modern and traditional, in a transforming Chinese society. The Rauschenberg Portfolios (part of the collection of the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung) will be shown in Munich for the first time.

Everyday functional things can be understood as “primary gestures”: a knot, for example, but also a circle, a sphere, a spiral, a bowl, or a marble. Transformed into an artistic object, they obtain a special presence and gain in value and significance. By defamiliarizing their form, changing their material, or placing them in a different context by means of negation or disassembly, such gestures become “charged” and thus communicate beyond the visible and banal, beyond the “primary”. They transport cultural traditions into the present, point to mythological or religious roots; they remember and tell stories. Often a wealth of associations and meanings is hidden under the surface. They trigger mental and emotional images—in attraction and difference. For the artist and for the viewer, the point is, as Hassan Khan expresses it, to read, decipher, and understand these primary gestures.

All of the artists in this exhibition work with such primary gestures. The Palestinian-British artist Mona Hatoum (b. 1952) places thousands of black marbles on top of and next to one another to form a round field (Turbulence, 2014). The Canadian artist Jana Sterbak (b. 1955) hand-blows bowls and stacks them inside one another, creating the impression of a spiral (Hard Entry, 2004). The Egyptian artist Hassan Khan (b. 1975) produces an artful replica of a knot in glass (The Knot, 2012), and the American artist Terry Winters (b. 1949) transforms the idea of a vessel into intuitive, organic forms such as spheres and bubbles (Marseille Templates, 2004–2006).

Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, Munich
The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung supports art and science. It was established in December 2000 by Alexander Tutsek and Dr. Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek as a nonprofit foundation. The foundation has an active interdisciplinary program committed to the special, the neglected, and the overlooked in art and science. So it is one of the goals of the foundation, in addition to its own collecting activities and its annual exhibitions, to support public collections. Thanks to the generous support of the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich is able to acquire an important work for its photography collection. The spectacular purchase of the famous series The Brown Sisters by the photographer Nicholas Nixon adds an iconic work to the collection of the Pinakothek der Moderne. Nicholas Nixon is one of the most important American photographers of his generation. The Brown Sisters has come to be regarded as one of the icons of the history of photography. Since 1975, the photographer has been taking a portrait of his wife and her three sisters every year. Over a period of nearly 45 years, a singular work has resulted, which both expresses the essence of photography and bears witness to ephemerality and the passing of time.

Contact
Goldmann Public Relations | Munich Berlin Zurich
Anja Fetzer, afetzer [​at​] goldmannpr.de, T0049 89 211 164 14