ESimply “forget the time and lose yourself in the pleasure of your own perception” – is it actually still allowed to do that with contemporary art in museums today? Who, as an artist, would want to freely admit this when there are so many conflicts to be dealt with, from identity politics to climate change? In any case, when Karina Bisch and Nicholas Chardon rummaged through the depot of the Bochum Museum, they were not looking for the faded promises of the twentieth century and the crises of the present time, they let their eyes wander “like in a candy shop” – with the aforesaid Pleasure of their personal perception. And discovered a spiral aluminum lampshade by Man Ray; a kinetic lattice object by François Morellet; a surreal tapestry by Jean Lurçat, whose tapestries were once vilified as “degenerate”. Bisch & Chardon point out that they are far from wanting to tell visitors what they should or should not do, or even want to patronize them. Both were born in Paris in 1974, live and work together as a couple, but each develop their work independently.
“Degenerate” carpets are being rehabilitated
In Bochum, they are now combining the pearls of their collection with their own works and are celebrating the expansion of the Bo and Wohlert museum, which opened forty years ago. The Danish architects, who were already responsible for the famous Louisiana Museum near Copenhagen in 1958, gave the Ruhr city an idiosyncratic extension in 1983 – difficult to use on the ground floor with its terracotta-colored tiles, opulently equipped with spatial resources above. A significant addition at the time for the Ruhr area and an urgently needed expansion for the museum that opened in 1960.
The artist couple calls the anniversary show “Squares and Roses” – you have to give them that: In the four decades of its existence, the high, long, huge hall for temporary exhibitions has rarely been seen in such a coherent, generous display as now with the roses and squares . The framework fits the artist-curators as cheerful formalists, someone has recognized the capital of space and redeems it with stately formats in an airy display. With a sense of proportion, the artists took possession of the architecture, which the Scandinavian master builders must have liked. The fresh breeze also reflects the handwriting of Noor Mertens, who has been director of the Museum am Stadtpark since 2021. The flower and the square stand for passion and reason, for a modernism of geometry and ornament (which is not a crime here, as in the essay by the architect Adolf Loos from 1908). Paper cuts à la Matisse and black squares after Malevich appear as siblings on one wall.
Wall rouge is applied, fabric pictures are mixed, squares are distorted
Bisch and Chardon underline the works from the Bochum collection with sonorous Wandrouge, including abstractions by Frank Stella, Ron Gorchov and Fujio Akai. With a sense of the remote, they track down the “fashion pictures” by the Czech Fluxus pioneer Milan Knížak and a sculptural “spatial construction KPS VXII” by the Swedish-Russian artist Vladimir Stenberg from 1919. In their own, large-format pictures, the artists cursorily reflect on the past hundred years, thereby subverting any heroic spirit. In expansive “fabric pictures”, Bisch mixes strict forms with floral patterns, while Chardon distorts the black square in numerous versions or paints the letters of the word “abstract” in white on black as an abstraction on the canvas.
Feel-good flair is the key. Then a picture by Mary Heilmann from the museum collection, which, according to the impression, already contains the program of the Parisian artist duo pretty much completely. In her composition “Too long (at the fair)” from 1993, the protagonist of postmodernism reflects the modernity of her predecessors – superficially cheerful, but this picture is not sweet. More of a Sweet & Sour brand cocktail.
Karina Bisch & Nicolas Chardon: Squares and Roses. In the Bochum Art Museum; until September 10th. No catalogue.
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