Kill All Monsters
25 May–29 June 2014
Special event during Art Basel:
Thursday 19 June, 7pm
Ausstellungsraum Klingental
Kasernenstrasse 23
4058 Basel
Switzerland
Hours: Tuesday–Friday 3pm–6pm,
Saturday–Sunday 11am–5pm
During the week of Art Basel:
Tuesday–Saturday 11am–9pm,
Sunday 11am–5pm
An instantaneous feedback of powerful cleansing noise.
A one-to-one relationship whereby each action is answered by a growling response.
Like poking an animal with a stick or crossing the threshold and setting off an alarm.
Once in motion this response can go on regardless of the initiator.
An emotion deadening machine repetition that sets up a rhythm for you to live by more easily.
Electro-shock therapy to wake you up when you slip into a coma. It can blow away the cloud with speed and volume and move away into a rarefied atmosphere where each hum in an audible mess becomes more clear and an inaudible mess in itself.
It makes you sweat the poisons out of your system.
A backwards battle towards a cliff that goes down towards chaos and silence.
All this and more.
It’s so esoteric, or so you think, but really it’s easy – just like staying alive.
I told you so.
Let us show you too.
–Excerpt from Destroy All Monsters magazine, Ann Arbor, Michigan (1976–1979)
Departing from the noise-rock band Destroy All Monsters and their underground magazine, this exhibition brings together artistic postures and gestures that deal with notions of deliverance and transformation. Kill All Monsters promotes the idea of liberation and ridding oneself of the weight of the world. The included installations, paintings, drawings, films, videos, sculptures and performances aim to map the topography of a sensory journey, whether peaking or bottoming out. The works on view oscillate between reverie and sweet madness, meditative experience and emotional urge, emphasizing one after the other the ways in which cathartic moments abound.
Curated by Séverine Fromaigeat, Charlotte Matter, and Reto Thüring
With the generous support of Pro Litteris, Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain Genève, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, and Oertli Stiftung.
