Lands End. Landscape as image and space
20 March – 16 May 2010
Opening reception:
19 March 2010, 7pm
Seestrasse 395/Postfach 771
8038 Zürich
Switzerland
Opening reception with a cooking event by guerilla gardener Maurice Maggi
In art, the most melancholic landscapes were created at a time when the natural of nature was surmised as something irretrievably lost, something endangered by industrialisation. Once more, one tried to halt the ravages of time and evoke an idyll that had never existed the way it was depicted. Those were the times of romanticism. What is the significance of landscape in art nowadays, 200 years later, in the year of biodiversity and hybrid artistic practices? What will happen if the social, economic, and cultural transformation processes in the terrain of landscape become topics of art? What if nature and technology no longer will be perceived as irreconcilable opposites but as mutually depending on each other? The exhibition “Lands End” investigates the images and imaginations determining how landscape is being viewed today. It presents new ideas and alternative drafts. It presumes that melancholy, nostalgia, and attraction, today, still play an important role and act as moments of standstill and criticism since today’s art, in general, is inclined to use strategies of description and irritation, exaggeration and opposition. In times when knowledge about how landscape is being construed has become widespread und has led to a more precise approach to the subject it is extremely important to introduce different lines of thought. They have to take into consideration the dual meaning of landscape, real living space on the one hand and the ideal on the other. The artists we invited did this in their very own special ways, making obvious that we need images to view things in a different manner.
Curators: Anke Hoffmann and Yvonne Volkart
With financial support from the Präesidialdepartment der Stadt Zürich, Bundesamt für Kultur (BAK), Migros Kulturproduzent
Event Programme:
Guided Tours with the curators: 14 April, 6pm; 28 April, 6pm; 16 May, 2pm
Conference and on-site inspections (only in German): 8 May, 1 – 6pm
Through examples of different perspectives from art, theory and activism this conference examines how the term landscape can be approached nowadays.
Address of welcome and introduction by Anke Hoffmann and Yvonne Volkart (curators Shedhalle);
Lecture: Maurice Maggi (guerilla gardener and cook, Zurich): Red and blue stones
On-site tour around the site of the Rote Fabrik with Maurice Maggi and Sebastian Mundwiler (artist and gardener, Basel)
Lecture: Annemarie Bucher (landscape historian, ZHdK Zurich)
Lecture: Sibylle Omlin (art historian/director ECAV, Sierre): artist’s views on the usage of landscape
Lecture: Philipp Felsch (philosopher of science, ETH Zurich): The Alps. melancholy and exhaustion
Press Material: texts and images for download: www.shedhalle.ch/eng/presse/index.shtml
Opening Times: Mo-Tue closed, Wed-Fr 1 – 5 pm, Sat – Sun 12 – 6pm
Bank Holidays: Shedhalle is closed on Good Friday, 2 April, and Easter Monday, 5 April.
On days with event programme the opening times will be prolongued.
General Information:
Shedhalle Zürich
Seestrasse 395/Postfach 771
CH – 8038 Zürich
T +41 44 481 59 50
F +41 44 481 59 51
