David Armstrong / Ana Jotta: Composição

Kunsthalle Zürich is delighted to announce new exhibitions by David Armstrong and Ana Jotta.

This is the first major survey of David Armstrong’s photography. Armstrong (1954–2014) documented his New York. We see a New York that no longer exists. It is New York as an attitude to life, beyond the Empire State Building, the urban canyons and yellow taxis that occur countless times in films, stories, ambitions and advertising. This New York is a promise, and New York as a home for outsiders and the stranded, for artists, poets, musicians and bohemians. Cookie Mueller, writer and actress in John Waters’ Pink Flamingos, among other films, immortalised these people in her texts, and Armstrong portrayed many of them, including Mueller herself. They, like him, lived in downtown Manhattan, partied at the legendary Mudd Club and hung out at the beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

“Yeah, life is tough in the real world. Actors wait on tables, ballet dancers work as topless go-go girls, artists wash dishes, and that’s not even the worst part. Someday you might bring your garbage on the subway, someday you might even shit in your own bank” wrote Cookie Mueller in the 1980s.

Ana Jotta’s exhibition Composição presents the work of an artist, b. 1946, who continually surprises and innovates. “The exhibition title, borrowed from one of the works, neither alludes to nor comments on the artist’s practice; it refers instead to the exhibition itself as a construct in the double sense of a process and an outcome. Rather than adopting a certain framework of reference or point of view when selecting the artworks, one basic rule was followed: to choose an artwork and thus set in motion a process of association between works that enhances an understanding of the artist’s work, providing insight into the intricacies of her practice and the idiosyncrasy of her subjective world. It was an intuitive and open-ended heuristic process with neither map nor compass.

Underlying the process of selection was a wish to compose a kaleidoscopic exhibition that could reflect the astonishing formal diversity that characterises Jotta’s artistic output. The exhibition provides ample evidence of her versatility with different materials and techniques. What may be disconcerting for someone unfamiliar with her work, however, is the absence of a recognisable style as a common denominator for the pieces shown here, or at least some of them. The result is what looks as if it might be a group exhibition.” (Excerpt from Miguel Wandschneider’s exhibition text)

David Armstrong’s exhibition is curated by Daniel Baumann and Wade Guyton, with Colleen Doyle, Elizabeth Whitcomb and the Estate of David Armstrong.

Ana Jotta, Composição is curated by Miguel Wandschneider, with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

The exhibitions open during Zurich Art Weekend from June 7–9, 2024, which includes a number of events at Kunsthalle Zürich and countless exhibitions across the city.