31: Women
Group Exhibition
(Exhibition Concept after Marcel Duchamp, 1943). Works from the Daimler Art Collection 1930–2020
Daimler Contemporary, Berlin
Through February 7, 2021

31: Women, the Daimler Art Collection’s new Berlin show references two groundbreaking presentations held at the New York gallery of Peggy Guggenheim called Art of This Century. The Exhibition by 31 Women, 1943, and The Women, 1945 were initiated and co-curated by Guggenheim’s friend and advisor, the artist Marcel Duchamp. These were the first exhibitions in the United States that focused, to this extent, exclusively on women artists.

Mirage: Energy and Water in the Great Basin
Group Exhibition
Boise Art Museum, Boise, Idaho
Through February 14, 2021

The Great Basin is a vast expanse of land covering much of the American West, defined geographically by the fact that it is a closed system, its rivers draining internally rather than to the sea. Its boundaries include parts of Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and California, and nearly all of Nevada. Its scale allows individuals, corporations, and government agencies to do things they can’t do elsewhere, from creating monumental artworks on the land to extracting natural resources or installing enormous wind farms, from testing weapons to experimenting with technology. It is a place that has long inspired artists drawn to its paradoxes.

Au rendez-vous des amis. Klassische Moderne im Dialog mit Gegenwartskunst aus der Sammlung Goetz
Group Exhibition
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Through March 28, 2021

With its multitude of startling new artistic styles, Modernism has remained a source of inspiration for successive generations of later artists. It paved the way for the liberation of perspective, proportion, and colour from formal verisimilitude. This living legacy is vividly reflected in the new display of modern art from our own collection, now presented in relation to 80 contemporary works from the Goetz Collection. The joint display leads to a broadening of artistic media, away from the traditional collection core of paintings to include photography, sculpture, and textile art. Many of the more recent artists also take a critical look at this legacy of Western culture and question how art, then and now, deals with the body, gender, and identity. The show features the art of Francis Bacon, Max Beckmann, Louise Bourgeois, Fischli Weiss, Rodney Graham, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Pablo Picasso, Oskar Schlemmer, Rosemarie Trockel, Woty Werner, Andrea Zittel, and many more.

The Experimental Field
Group Exhibition
Accelerator, Stockholm University, Stockholm
Through March 14, 2021

How can art explore future scenarios for new lifestyles, relationships to other species, to the earth and between humans? Established in 1816 on the site where Accelerator and Stockholm University are located, the Experimental Field was an experimental agricultural science research activity that aimed to develop Sweden’s agriculture. The eponymous exhibition presents eight contemporary art practices that experiment with issues pertaining to the major challenges of our time. Taking its starting point in history, the exhibition The Experimental Field highlights and fosters discussions based on the experimentation taking place in contemporary art and science today. 

Portable Sculpture
Group Exhibition
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
February 5–June 6, 2021

This group exhibition explores sculptures dating from 1934 to the present day that are designed to fold up, pack down, or dismantle. 

The word ‘sculpture’ is often associated with large, immobile objects that are weighty and permanent. But sculpture is not always fixed in place: it can be mobile, agile and endlessly adaptable. The portability of the sculptures in this exhibition is sometimes an indication of geopolitical situations, and sometimes of personal circumstances, but always of artistic ingenuity.

Andrea Zittel
Works on Paper
November 27, 2020–February 13, 2021
Berlin

Works on Paper presents 26 new drawings that all hinge, in one way or another, on planar structures. Planar panels are flat rectangular elements that form the building blocks of so much of the reality that we construct around ourselves— from benches to bed frames to walkways.

Andrea Zittel
Parallel Planar Panels
November 3, 2015–January 16, 2016
Berlin

Over the last 25 years I have developed a practice in which spaces, objects, and acts of living all intertwine within a single ongoing investigation into what it means to exist and participate in our culture today. ‘How to live?’ and ‘what gives life meaning?’ are core issues in both my personal life and my artistic practice. Answering these questions has often entailed the examination of social norms, values, hierarchies and categories, which are all highly articulated human constructions that are oddly meaningful and somewhat arbitrary at the same time.

Andrea Zittel
Pattern of Habit
June 8–September 10, 2011
Berlin

“For the last twenty years my work in one way or another has examined how psychological structures, thought systems and beliefs are manifested as physical objects in the world that we create around ourselves. Most recently this research has focused on the patterns and systems that are bound to habits, schedules and rules. For instance, I live in the desert where there all of my day to day necessities are ordered on-line, and delivered to my doorstep – a never ending stream of products, each carefully packed in its own cardboard box. After I unpack it’s contents I eye the box thinking that it is a shame to throw out such a perfect vehicle – especially if it has special proportions or clearly crisp edges and corners. Soon I found myself stacking the boxes up along an empty wall, eventually devising a way to cement this irregular structure together into an integrated unit that reflects a pattern of my own life through consumption.” Andrea Zittel, May 2011

Andrea Zittel
Smockshop London
September 19–October 3, 2009
London

The Smockshop is a continuation of Andrea Zittel’s long-standing aesthetic investigation into the daily routines and functional experiences of everyday life. Founded in Los Angeles in 2007, this artistic and economic ‘pop up’ experiment appeared in galleries, stores, and non-profit venues across North American before making its European debut at Sprüth Magers Berlin in February of 2009. A profit-making enterprise with social awareness, the Smockshop generates income for non-commercial artists who are not yet self-sustaining.

Andrea Zittel
Smockshop Berlin
February 18–April 18, 2009
Berlin

This is the first time the Smockshop (www.smockshop.org) has set up its stall outside North America, and it is also scheduled to be the last time it opens for business at all, making this a unique opportunity to experience Zittel’s artistic and economic experiment. Two artisans will work in the gallery for the first four days of the exhibition making the smocks that are available for purchase right after their production. The works will be then on view in the gallery throughout the whole exhibition period. The double wrap-around garments designed by Zittel collectively represent an aesthetically diverse yet functionally uniform body of work. Extending Zittel’s longstanding interest in the form and function of everyday life, the smocks develop a modernist tradition of clothing design and manufacture, extending back to the Russian avant-garde, which emphasises utility and economy, and inclines towards an alternative experience of clothing to the prevailing discourse of fashion.

Andrea Zittel
A-Z Uniform Series 1991 – 2002
May 15–June 28, 2003
Munich

Most of us to own a favorite garment that makes us look and feel good but social etiquette dictates that we wear a different change of clothes every day. Sometimes this multitude of options can actually feel more restrictive that a self-imposed constant. Because I was tired of the tyranny of constant variety, I began a six-month uniform project. Starting in 1991 I would design and make one perfect dress for each season and would then to wear that dress every day for six months. Although utilitarian in principle, I often found that there was often a strong element of fantasy or emotional need invested in each season’s design. The experiment as a whole worked quite well, especially since dreaming up the next season’s design helped relieve any monotony that might have occurred from wearing the same dress every day.