LUTZ BACHER

This show immediately follows Lutz Bacher’s The Lee Harvey Oswald Interview, an exhibition at Galerie Buchholz New York from December 9, 2021–February 5, 2022 which presented a seminal series from the1970s exemplifying her earliest interests in conspiracy, American mythologies around politics and celebrity, a contentious relationship between photography and language, and a profound suspicion about media and its ability to fix meaning. Over the course of more than four decades, Lutz Bacher’s work expanded from these interests, often revealing in the cast-off or discarded materials of contemporary culture their most cosmic and zoomed-out suggestions and intimations. The plastic tubing in More Than This can look like industry or infrastructure in ruins, suggesting bones or joints, but also wormholes or portals or periscopes that might lead to some other dimension. The scroll-like paintings of tree branches can resemble nerve-endings with splattered synapses. The audio track of bird songs with its non-human communication, and the lighting program that cuts the artificial illumination of the gallery, both suggest circumstances that could be either pre-historic or postapocalyptic.

Uncharacteristically, Lutz Bacher agreed to give an artist talk at the opening of More Than This at Secession, in which she discussed early lessons and formative experiences in her artistic life, going back to childhood. A link to the talk is here: https://vimeo.com/158164383 and for the duration of the exhibition the video will be on view at The Betty Center, Lutz Bacher’s archive located at 57 East 82nd Street and organised by Galerie Buchholz. Appointments are available for further research at The Betty Center by emailingpost@thebettycenter.com.

This is Galerie Buchholz’s eighth solo exhibition of Lutz Bacher’s work. In 2021, Lutz Bacher’s work was included in Stop Painting curated by Peter Fischli at the Fondazione Prada, Venice; Zeroes and Ones at KWBerlin; K20/K21—On Display at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, and Exhibition as Image at 80WSE, in New York. In 2020, her work was included in No Dandy, No Fun at the Kunsthalle Bern, and Misfitting Together: Serial Formations of Pop Art, Minimal Art, and Coneceptual Art at MUMOK in Vienna, among others. In 2019, The University of California Irvine presented a solo show by Lutz Bacher titled Blue Wave at the University Art Gallery, organised by the artist Monica Majoli and curator Allyson Unzickerand developed together with the artist. Also in 2019, the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco presented show of new work by Vincent Fecteau which featured key pieces by Lutz Bacher, his long-time friend and collaborator. In 2018, Lutz Bacher mounted three institutional solo exhibitions: The Silence of the Sea was the inaugural show at the newly opened Lafayette Anticipations in Paris; The Long March at 80WSE New York University, NY, and a large-scale exhibition titled What’s Love Got To Do With It? at K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Previous solo exhibitions by Lutz Bacher have been held at Yale Union, Portland; 356 Mission Road, Los Angeles; Secession, Vienna; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; Kunsthalle Zurich; ICA London; Portikus, Frankfurt am Main; Kunstverein Munich; andMOMA/P.S.1, New York, among others. Her work was also featured in in Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy, at the Met Breuer, New York; The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery & American Fine Arts, co (1983-2004) at Bard CCS and the Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-On-Hudson; Other Mechanisms, Secession, Vienna; Stories of Almost Everyone, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Mechanisms, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco; A Slow Succession with Many Interruptions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; America is Hard to See, WhitneyMuseum of American Art, New York; Open Dress, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum, New York; the 2012 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Spies in the House of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NewYork, among others.