On the picture Urs Fischer, Undigested Sunset.
SKELETON The body’s armature in contemporary sculpture 30 October 2015 to 7 February 2016.
This autumn, Museum Beelden aan Zee presents an exhibition exploring the role of the skeleton in contemporary sculpture. SKELETON is the result of close collaboration with collector Bert Kreuk, whose substantial contribution involves numerous loaned works.
To mark the exhibition, he has also gifted Matthew Day Jackson’s Terminal Velocity (2008) to the museum. Throughout the years, humankind has remained the most common subject of sculpture (and art in general). Nowadays, artists often use the human body to make specific intrinsic commentary, the body becomes the conveyor of emotional life and of social and political conditions.
This exhibition examines the meaning of the skeleton in contemporary art. What remains of the notion of memento mori? The skeleton has proven to be an artistic form that has more than stood the test of time, but how has this concept changed over the years? The exhibition includes work by Matthew Day Jackson, Urs Fischer, Carolein Smit and many others.
17th-century still lifes abound with bones and parts of skeletons, referencing the transience and finite nature of life. They are a warning to the unsuspecting viewer, who looks upon a seemingly arbitrary composition of recently snuffed candles, skulls, hollowed out fruits, closed books and empty rummers. The skeleton and the skull have moral implications; reminding the viewer of their mortality, to live life in the correct manner and of the fact that in the hour of death, everyone is equal. The contemporary skeleton has a more modern manifestation; as an X-ray, sitting on a couch or sprawled on a wrecked car bonnet.
Dutch sculptor Caspar Berger (1965) is an essential element of the exhibition – in his current project, the artist uses little other than his own skeleton, creating ‘self-portraits’ based on a 3D scan of his skeleton. Berger produces his own relics, including a 3D print of his humerus, cast in gold. One of Matthew Day Jackson’s (1974) sculptures, Terminal Velocity (2008), initially appears to be an odd collage of wooden limbs, somewhat carelessly strewn on a twisted sheet of metal. But on closer inspection, one must draw another conclusion: these forms came to be as the result of the fatal fall of an unlucky soul from a rooftop onto the bonnet of a car parked below. The work raises the question: to whom does this body belong?
In his sculpture Undigested Sunset (2001-2002), Urs Fisher (1973) places a skeleton on the couch. The skeleton was once a living person, kicking back in front of the television. The artist appears to be warning us against the inert world of meaninglessness.
The collection of Bert Kreuk forms the heart of the exhibition, with approximately five monumental works from his collection being loaned to the museum. Museum Beelden aan Zee has developed a close relationship with the collector in recent years, and has been the grateful recipient of several gifts from his collection: Senza Titolo (2012) by Italian artist Nicola Martini, Fibre and bonds (2013) by American artist Valerie Snobeck and Terminal Velocity (2008) by Matthew Day Jackson – one of the key works in the SKELETONS exhibition. The gifts from the Bert Kreuk Collection involve a total sum of approximately €400,000.
