Conceived by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the exhibition PhotoSculpture in Zurich’s Kunsthaus will run from February 25 to May 15, 2011. Imagined by MOMA curator Roxana Marcoci, the exhibition, featuring more than 300 current and historical pictures gathered from collections of nearly 100 sculptors and photographers, will only be showing in Zurich. PhotoSculpture is undoubtedly the first retrospective demonstrating photography’s conceptual influence on sculpture. A historical and critical analysis in ten chapters covers the knowledge and theses acquired and developed over the past 170 years. “The exhibition asks how and why sculpture became the object of photography and how those very pictures enriched and enhanced sculptural expression.”

The first chapter entitled “Sculpture in the Photographic Age” shows how early photographers focused on sculpture as one of their original subjects. And how it applied the technical and technological developments that would follow (optical, light, collages, laboratory manipulations…). The earliest pictures of sculpture taken in cathedrals by Charles Nègre, those by Roger Fenton, and even the series shot by André Kertesz in his workshop raise the question of representation and underline “the significance of photography in the analysis of art”.

The second chapter, “Eugène Atget, the marvelous in the mundane” emphasizes French cultural heritage. The chapter “Auguste Rodin: the sculptor and the photographer’s risks” exemplifies the multiple creations by photographers, especially those asked of Edward Steichen, often in complicity with the artist. With “Constantin Brancusi, the workshop as a mobile group”, the sculptor himself stages his works. In what he called “radiant pictures” the “sculptural figure is broken by flashing lights”. The chapter entitled “Marcel Duchamp, the ready-made as reproduction” questions the boundaries between the unique object, the ready-made, and the series. “Cult political and cultural personalities” shows the classics of 20th century photography including “American photographs” (1936) by Walker Evans, “The American Monument” (1976) by Lee Friedlander or “The structure of Things” (1988) by David Goldblatt. It is the first time works such as these have been gathered under this theme, in reference to sculpture.

“The workshop without walls: sculpture in a wider field” examines how artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark questioned the meaning of sculpture and used photography to explore the three dimensionality of the “sculpture-object”.

“Daguerre’s soup: what is a sculpture”. The term “Daguerre’s Soup” (1974) was borrowed from Marcel Broodthaers’ work in reference to Daguerre’s techniques during the earliest days of photography. The chapter features Brassaï’s “Involontary Sculptures” (1932), "Photosculptures” by Alina Szapocznikow (1970-1971) and, from the 1980’s on, pictures of lost objects gathered and arranged by various artists.

Dada and Surreal photo-collages by Man Ray or Herbert Beyer are featured in the chapter “The Pygmalion complex: animate and inanimate figures”… As well as “The body as Sculpture Object” as envisioned by Bruce Nauman and Dennis Oppenheim. The body as material or “Rhetoric of the pose” where the presence alone of the camera provokes a change in behavior (Valie Export, Hannah Wilke…)

The exhibition catalog explores in detail the theories evoked in each chapter with texts by Geoffrey Batchen, Tobia Bezzola (Kunsthaus curator) and Roxana Marcoci.

The 256 page book is published by Hatje Cantz in English and German.

Bernard Perrine
Member of the Institut de France
bernard.perrine1@orange.fr

PhotoSculpture
25 février – 15 mai 2011
Kunsthaus Zürich
Heimplatz 1
CH–8001 Zurich