Ocula Conversation Pierre Huyghe: The Artist as Director Pierre Huyghe is a producer of spectacular and memorable enigmas, with works that function more like mirages than as objects. Abyssal Plain (2015–ongoing), his contribution to the 2015 Istanbul Biennial, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, was installed on the seabed of the Marmara Sea, some 20 metres below the surface of the water and close to...
Ocula Report MoMA Expansion: Once the Modern, Always the Modern 29 Nov 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula In the early decades of its existence, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), founded in 1929, transformed from a philanthropic project modestly housed in a few rooms of the Heckscher Building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, to an alleged operating node in the United States' cultural struggle during the cold war, and one of the...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Since its founding in 1996 the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst sees itself as a site of reflection as well as production. The moving in together with other art institutions and galleries in the spaces of a former Zurich brewery, the Löwenbrau-Areal, was at the same time the birth of the museum in its present-day form. The active cooperation in the process of art production and continual furthering of it with exhibition activities linked to the collection has determined the history of the museum.
Through a processual lightness the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst sets itself apart from its larger, more venerable colleagues. The museum focuses more on large-scale productions in close cooperation with the artists and less on that which is already tried and tested. In this manner the term contemporary art is understood as having a dynamic temporal purpose, of which the permanent exploration of peering forwards and backwards in time is inherent. Simultaneously the term embedment in a societal context and participation in a process of exchange and production of art is implied. The exhibitions at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst formulate art history as a moving process, which is open to investigations, corrections and variations. The integration of the collection into a lively environment contiguous and supporting contemporary art production directed at an open-minded public is a further concern of the museum.
