This summer at Moderna Museet
Explosion!
Painting as action
2 June–9 September 2012
Yoko Ono
Grapefruit
6 June–16 September 2012
Bucky Dome
A pavilion for music, art, architecture, and design
17 May–9 September 2012
Moderna Museet
Exercisplan 4
111 49 Stockholm, Sweden
Explosion!
Painting as action
2 June–9 September 2012
Curator: Magnus af Petersens
Kazuo Shiraga painted with his feet, suspended by ropes above the canvas; Andy Warhol or his assistants urinated on the canvas; and Niki de Saint Phalle fired a rifle at her panels that she had prepared with balloons of paint under layers of plaster. The exhibition Explosion features works by some 50 artists from the late 1940s to today.
Moderna Museet’s exhibition Explosion takes off where modernism ends, when it was so ripe that it was on the verge of exploding—which it did, in the form of a variety of new ways of making art. Practically every door was opened with an aggressive kick, and a new generation of artists began seeing themselves not as painters or sculptors but simply as artists, who regarded all materials and subjects as potential art. That is how the American artist and writer Allan Kaprow, the man who invented the word “happening,” described the situation in 1956 in his now legendary The Legacy of Jackson Pollock.
The exhibition follows a theme that runs from Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, via John Cage’s fascination for chance as a method for creating art, to performance and contemporary conceptual approaches. For the first time in Sweden, this exhibition also presents the Japanese artist group Gutai (1954–1972). In Europe they exhibited together with artists from the nebulous artist group Zero, also featured in Explosion with works by the co-founders Günther Uecker and Otto Piene and others.
Explosion! Painting as action was produced by Moderna Museet and will tour to Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona in autumn 2012.
The exhibition is supported by Scania.
Yoko Ono
Grapefruit
6 June–16 September
Curator: Cecilia Widenheim
The exhibition has its starting point in the instruction pieces of Grapefruit (1964), and highlights Yoko Ono as a pioneer of conceptualism and of the Fluxus movement.
“I named my first book of instructions with the name of the fruit I loved. Grapefruit is a hybrid of orange and lemon and to me, it represented East and West, the two cultures in my life which gave the instructions the power of the Universe. Have fun with it.” –Yoko Ono
For the exhibition Yoko Ono has written a new instruction: Search for the Fountain. The text has been sent to some 20 artists who have been invited to respond to the text in various ways. Among the participating artists are VALIE EXPORT, Tris Vonna-Michell, Simone Forti, Julieta Aranda, Jean-Jacques Lebel, and Emily Roysdon. For all participating artists, please visit Moderna Museet’s website.
Yoko Ono will also realise two of her early instructions together with the public on Djurgården Island in Stockholm during the full-moon night between 4 and 5 June. The instruction Evening till Dawn, realised for the first time in Kyoto in 1964, will be followed by Secret Piece from 1953, in which three musicians improvise in the grove to the first sounds of the dawn.
The exhibition is supported by Vinge.
Bucky Dome
A pavilion for music, art, architecture, and design
17 May–9 September
Curator: Catrin Lundqvist
At Skeppsholmen this summer you will find everything you need for a great summer experience with music, art, a family workshop, food, and picnic hampers.
What is the Bucky Dome?
In summer 1971, Moderna Museet and Bengt Carling, built a dome according to the American architect Buckminster Fuller’s concept of “more with less.”
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (1895–1983) was an American architect, visionary, designer, and writer. He became famous for his geodesic domes, which are still in use as radar stations, city halls, and exhibition venues.
Throughout the summer of 1971, the jazz musician Don Cherry, his artist wife Moki Cherry, their children Neneh and Eagle-Eye Cherry, and a cat all lived in the “Jail” on Skeppsholmen, inviting their musician and artist friends to the “Dome” to play music, perform, paint, and arrange educational art activities for kids and grown-ups.
From May to September this year, Bengt “Beche” Berger and Bengt Carling will be collaborating with Arkitekturmuseet and Moderna Museet to recreate the Bucky Dome.
*Images above:
Left to right: Saburo Murakami, Tsuka (Passage), 1956. © Makiko Murakami and the former members of the Gutai Art Association. Courtesy: Museum of Osaka University. From the 2nd Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan hall, Tokyo.
Yoko Ono, Grapefruit. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1970. Orginally published in 1964. © Yoko Ono.
Bucky Dome, 1971. © Foto: Erik Cornelius/Moderna Museet.
