Heinz Mack & Helmut Federle
Documentaries
ROBERT BARRY
Robert Barry (New York, 1936) is one of the pioneers of Conceptualism and Minimalism. His work has always been focused on space: the space between objects, between time, between artist and viewer. To him, the “idea” of an artwork is as important as the art object. Words are essential elements in Barry’s oeuvre. They evoke mental states in flux or contemplation and declare to the viewer a temporal and psychic intangibility.
Language is crucial in Barry’s work. He always tries to use language in a different way. Paintings as Untitled (2015) are an evidence of his exploration.The use of wood as a surface represents the rhythms of nature. Each piece is different, taken out in some particular moment in the life of the tree. The words operate against that, two elements playing against each other.
Untitled, 2015
Silver vinyl on wooden panels
61 x 61 x 2 cm
Unique piece
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“I like the idea of slicing so much off the words that all you get is maybe one or two letters or a part of a letter, so you really don’t know what the word is. You have to fill that in yourself. I like the idea of filling in the missing information.”
_ROBERT BARRY
Barry’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the US and internationally. His artwork is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Chicago Art Institute, Chicago; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others.
LUIS CAMNITZER
Luis Camnitzer (b.1937) is a German-born Uruguayan artist who lives in New York since 1964. His work explores subjects such as repression under systems of power, pedagogical norms, and the deconstruction of familiar frameworks. His use of language as an art medium has distinguished his practice for over five decades.
At The instrument and its work, Camnitzer reflects about the origin of the artwork, showing a pencil and a line drawn with it. The artistic object is reduced to its most basic elements.
The Tool and Its Work, 2015
Pencil and pencil drawing on wall
Variable measures
Unique piece
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His work has been shown at important institutions since the 1960s, including solo exhibitions at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2018); El Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, Santiago, Chile (2013); Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (2011); El Museo del Barrio, New York (1995); Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (1993); List Visual Arts Center at M.I.T., Cambridge, MA (1991); Lehman College Art Gallery in the Bronx, New York (1991); Kunsthalle Kiel, Germany (2003); Daros Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, El Museo del Barrio, New York; and Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellin, Bogota, Colombia (2010–13).
Camnitzer’s work is in the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Tate, London; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Daros Latin America Collection, Zurich; among others.
HELMUT FEDERLE
Helmut Federle (Solothurn, Switzerland, 1944) is one of the most respected European abstract painters of our times. Austere, geometrically organised forms arranged in sequences characterise his practice. With this commitment to abstraction, the artist stands in the tradition of Classical Modernism and its search for spiritual content within non-objective form.
Basics on Composition J (Dedication: Ezra Pound) (Der Tod der Amsel), 2019
Oil on canvas
40 x 50 cm
Unique piece
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“The work depends on something external and the content in my paintings depends only on my visión, my view of the things. It is the dematerialization of a visión. It is a trace and not a proof.”
Federle has had solo exhibitions at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, the Kunsthalle Zurich, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Friedericianum in Kassel, the Galerie national du Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, as well as the Kunsthaus Bregenz. He also represented Switzerland at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997. By this time, he had become internationally well known primarily for his large geometrical paintings. However, his smaller pictures have also been exhibited many times in the last decade—for example, in the major exhibition American Songline in the Kunstmuseum Luzern in 2012-13. The Kunstmuseum Basel has devoted to Helmut Federle a solo presentation in 2019.
His works can be found in many museums and private collections, including the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Tate Modern in London, the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Goetz Collection in Munich.
Basics on Composition A, 2019
Oil on canvas
40 x 50 cm
Unique piece
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HEINZ MACK
Heinz Mack (Lollar, Germany, 1931) was, together with Otto Piene, the founder of the artists group they called ZERO in 1957. They wanted to break with tradition and the apparently indissoluble relation between German art and Expressionism. Consequently, they expressed an affinity with the Minimal aesthetic and emphasized light, motion and space as their main focus. Time after, some other artists such as Günther Uecker, Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein or Yayoi Kusama joined the group.
Untitled, 1969
Ink on hand-made paper
84 x 120 x 6 cm
Unique piece
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“All the artists that were or have been involved in the spirit of ZERO in general are working with structures and behind these structures is the idea of light, space, and movement.”
Untitled, 1957/1958
Synthetic resin on muslin
62 x 71 cm
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Untitled (Klassische Chromatik), 2001
Pastel crayon on hand-made paper
124 x 87 cm
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Mack’s work has been exhibited internationally since 1959 and can be found in some of the most prestigious institutions and private collections including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlín; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
IAN WALLACE
Ian Wallace (Shoreham, UK, 1943) uses photography and painting to investigate the relationship between these and other media, with a focus on the production of narrative, cinematic, literary, and otherwise. His works are characterised by the abstract combinations of flat colours, visibly influenced by De Stijl, and which often show the spaces where the artist works: the studio, the museum and the street. The juxtaposition of painting and photography, the first being completely abstract and the second very descriptive, manifests the interest of the artist in exploring the power of images and the possibilities of expression offered by the different pictorial mediums.
Support Surface (the table), 2017
Photolaminate and acrylic on canvas
122 x 91 cm
Unique piece
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“I wanted to draw on the tradition of painting, but embrace the latest technologies and ideas in photography, and open art to the possibilities of new values and new ways of seeing. With my work, I seek to ask ‘what is possible to think through art?’
Hotel La Corniche, Corse IV, 2009
Photolaminate and acrylic on canvas
61 x 61 cm
Unique piece
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LOOKING FORWARD TO FIAC 2021
Grand Palais Éphémère under construction