Büchler, Mograbi, and Stark
3 artists in Van Abbemuseum
On 12 May, the exhibition trio Büchler / Mograbi / Stark opened in the Van Abbemuseum, where the work of three established artists is shown in their first institutional solo exhibitions. By exhibiting the diversity of works by Pavel Büchler (Czechoslovakia, 1952), Avi Mograbi (Israel, 1956) and Frances Stark (USA, 1967) side by side, an overview of the contemporary art scene today occurs.
Pavel Büchler
A key mode Büchler’s practice is the way he invests objects with storytelling, making the objects speak in a way that changes their effect on the spectator. He works with old technology, audio recording, light and the material and mental presence of texts but all with a focus on how we give things meanings that do not belong to them in the first place. Büchlers’s work evolves around two fundamental concerns: the leftovers of modernism and everyday materials. He uses icons of our recent cultural past from Kafka to Beckett to Warhol to distil and compress history and to give it new currency in the present. His question seems often to come down to a simple one: “How can I reconfigure this artwork so that it works right here and right now, in our world”. His answer is usually spare, almost parsimonious in its use of material. Other work uses found material as its inspiration and is excessive, almost grandiose in scale.
Avi Mograbi
Avi Mograbi’s documentaries have been shown worldwide. He studied philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv and Art at the Ramat Hasharon Art Schoo, and has been working in and with film for many years. His films primarily show the military and political situation in Israel and as well as the region. In his documentaries he re-tells commonly known stories in a humorous way, with an often shocking effect, and leaves the audience with a feeling of ‘disbelief’. In his work Mograbi deliberately mixes fiction and real footage in a personal style, implying irony to make his films both dark and confusing. The filmic language he uses helps the audience comprehend the situations he addresses as well as his own position in this almost surreal political situation.
The Fall of Frances Stark
The American artist Frances Stark combines a visual art practice with writing. The numerous connections between literature and art determine her artistic position. The relationship between verbiage and image-making is a persistent theme explored in the work. The starting point of this exhibition is the publication of a book about her body of visual works, which is the counterpart of the book Collected Writings 1993-2003, which was published four years ago. Together they form a diptych, two parts that are simultaneously allied and separated. Stark examines the book and the exhibition as a discursive means; what is the difference between reading a text on the wall or in a book? And conversely, what does it mean for the tactile and detailed collage to find itself on the page?
Curators
Phillip van den Bossche curated The Fall of Frances Stark
Esra Sarigedik Öktem curated the solo exhibitions by Avi Mograbi and Pavel Büchler
Publications
The three exhibitions each have a publication:
Frances Stark: Collected Work ISBN 978-3-86560-263-3
Avi Mograbi: films and video works ISBN/EAN:9789086900800
Pavel Büchler: Absentmindedwindowgazing ISBN/EAN: 9789086900763
Exhibitions
Van Abbemuseum
BILDERDIJKLAAN 10
EINDHOVEN – THE NETHERLANDS
+31 [0]40 238 1000
info@vanabbemuseum.nl
TU – SU 11:00 – 17:00
TH 11.00 – 21:00
