JIMMIE
DURHAM
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A Matter of Life
and Death
and Singing
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DURHAM
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A Matter of Life
and Death
and Singing
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Press View:
h 11.00 / May 23 2012
h 11.00 / May 23 2012
My work might be considered ‘interventionist’
because it works against the two foundations of the European tradition:
Belief and Architecture. My work is against the connection of art to
architecture, to the ‘statue’, to monumentality. I want it to be
investigative, and therefore not ‘impressive’, not believable.
– Jimmie Durham, 2003
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M
HKA is proud to present the first comprehensive retrospective of Jimmie
Durham’s art. born in Arkansas in 1940 and based in Europe since 1994,
he is one of the most influential artists today and a prominent essayist
and poet. His art and his thinking are of crucial importance to many
artists, curators and theoreticians, not least of the younger
generation.
Durham
is one of very few contemporary artists to also have hands-on
experience of political work. in the 1970s he was one of the leaders of
the American Indian Movement and then the representative of the
international Indian Treaty council to the united nations.
The
title for the retrospective was also used for one of durham’s first
solo exhibitions in New York in the 1980s. A Matter of Life and Death
and Singing reflects his seriousness and wit, his aesthetic and
political engagement, his inventive resistance to architecture and other
symbols of the state. all this is part of durham’s uncompromising
commitment to what he calls ‘humanity’s thinking process’.
Durham
uses all the components of what is today called visual art: the object,
the image, the word, the action. images and words may be nailed or
glued or painted onto objects, which may be made ‘live’ in front of an
audience. This process may be captured on video. His work is ‘sculpture’
in the widest sense: material appearances in space. The materials range
from wood and stone and bone to plastic tubes and printed text. Durham
also works with drawing, painting and video, and he creates his own
museums, sometimes in collaboration with his partner, the artist Maria
Thereza Alves.
Durham’s
retrospective at M HKA features more than 100 works from all his
creative periods. Many of his ideas and images recur in different forms
at different stages of his career, so the exhibition presents
‘ensembles’ of works that are not always chronologically organised.
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Wien Lukatsch gallery and bookshop for art books,
Schöneberger Ufer 65, 3rd floor, 10785 Berlin
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A generously illustrated book will
accompany the retrospective. It is published by M HKA in collaboration
with JRP Ringier in Zurich and contains essays by Jimmie Durham himself,
Guy Brett and Richard William Hill, as well as an introduction by the
curators. In addition there will be a new collection of Durham’s essays
edited by Jean Fisher, who also edited the previous collection, A
Certain Lack of Coherence.
The
whole project is based on in-depth research and the creation of a
substantial database, the M HKA ensemble bank, which already contains
all of Durham’s texts and information about more than 800 of his works.
This is the beginning of a digital catalogue raisonné of Jimmie Durham’s
oeuvre, which M HKA will continue to develop.
Curators: Bart de Baere, Anders Kreuger.
AN ADDITIONAL TALK BY
JIMMIE DURHAM WILL TAKE PLACE:
JIMMIE DURHAM WILL TAKE PLACE:
Thursday April 26, at 13.00hrs
Schöneberger Ufer 65, 3rd floor, 10785 Berlin
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