Mitchell-Innes & Nash is pleased to announce Martin Kersels in Under Destruction October 15, 2010 – January 23, 2011 Destruction in art - 50 years after Tinguely's Homage to New York Group show in collaboration with the Swiss Institute, New York. Co-curated by Chris Sharp and Gianni Jetzer, Under Destruction opens in collaboration with the Swiss Institute, New York and features some twenty internationally known contemporary artists that examine the use and role of destruction in contemporary art. Fifty years after Jean Tinguely's historic Homage to New York (1960), the present exhibition proposes a series of alternative approaches to a theme traditionally associated with the more spectacular and inherently protest-oriented work of Tinguely, Gustav Metzger and others in the 50s and 60s. "If nothing can be created, something must be destroyed", is how Rosalind Krauss succinctly summarized Georges Bataille's The Accursed Share. While this phrase can basically describe the ethos of "Under Destruction", the exhibition raises the stakes normally linked with such a deleterious theme. Not only does it explore the various modes of destruction in art, but, more importantly, it also addresses to what ends it is implemented. Indeed, the exhibition reflects on the subject from a series of angles, perceiving destruction as everything from a generative force to environmental memento mori, and from consumer fallout to a form of poetic transformation. Predominantly kinetic, the show largely consists of works whose mechanisms reveal themselves in real time to the viewer. The strikingly spectacular nature of some works is complemented by an unexpected sense for subtlety and quietude in other works, the combination of both progressively revealing the rich diversity of destruction in contemporary art. Museum Tinguely Paul Sacher-Anlage 2 P.O. Box 3255 CH-4002 Basel Telephone + 41 61 681 93 20 Fax + 41 61 681 93 21 Opening hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11–19 h | Monday closed
