Installation view Fluidity; .
Photo by Fred Dott.
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz Berlin/Cologne/New York.

Kunstverein, Hamburg, 2016:

The exhibition FLUIDITY surveys the history of “dematerialization,” from 1966 to 2016, expanding the scope of this term, beyond past political-conceptual strategies, to include the generation of “digital natives.” Society and artistic practices have transformed considerably over the past fifty years. Discussion about these changes—their impact on art, the associated political debates—is precisely what the Kunstverein in Hamburg seeks to ignite.

Conceptual art in the 1960s looked to dissolve the artwork as a material object, in favor of an art formed of ideas and concepts critical of the mechanisms of the market and the modernist canon. In turn, art of the 1990s used participation to reassess economic and institutional structures. Both movements promoted a “dematerialization” of art, intended to actively stimulate the spectator. This term was coined in 1968 by the curator and critic Lucy Lippard; in our highly mediated, digitally-networked world—a world arguably more fluid and dematerialized than ever before—it deserves re-reading. To this end, FLUIDITY juxtaposes art from both periods with conceptual work produced by a young generation of artists, who have developed new strategies and critical appraisals of today’s society.

By tracing “dematerialization” from the 1960s to the present, FLUIDITY reveals broader social tendencies and the ways they have been reflected in political art. These trends include the development of the neoliberal economy and the art market, the increasing “liquification” of both values and currencies, and the dematerialization of processes of work. Through this approach, the exhibition takes aim at the one-sidedness of recent debates on materiality and art. It also enables new discussion and critical reflection: on the contemporary conditions of representation—and the delineation of art as a field.

Curated by Bettina Steinbrügge (Kunstverein in Hamburg), Nina Möntmann (Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm), and Vanessa Joan Müller (Kunsthalle Wien).

With work by Sarah Abu Abdallah, Heba Amin, Eleanor Antin, Darren Bader, Tyler Coburn, Simon Denny, Jason Dodge, Maria Eichhorn, Dora García, Liam Gillick, Melanie Gilligan, Goldin+Senneby, Pierre Huyghe, Roberto Jacoby, Hanne Lippard, Lee Lozano, Mathias Poledna, Mladen Stilinović, and UBERMORGEN.

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