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Adel Abdessemed, Marina Abramović, Sanford Biggers, Louise Bourgeois, Peter Buggenhout, Nathalie Djurberg, Amar Kanwar, Bharti Kher, Sigalit Landau, Tea Mäkipää, Ana Mendieta, Mariella Mosler, Kiki Smith, Nancy Spero, Philip Taaffe, Su-Mei Tse

The exhibition "Signs of Life" follows two objectives. First, it wants no more than to enable an immediate and impressive art experience with specifically selected works. And second, it aims at initiating a reflection on the origin and development of art and on its fundamental ability to introduce into the world an object of significance. The exhibition focuses specifically on the use to which contemporary artists put ancient knowledge handed down in the visual arts, and how they use this knowledge to provide a perspective on the sensibilities of the twenty-first century.

Imagination, Abstraction, Narrative: since its Paleolithic origins and continuing into the present day, art has always tackled life's central questions. As paradoxical as it may seem, the visual arts are ideally suited to rendering immaterial principles and values intelligible and giving them a tangible presence. This occurs, for instance, when (divine or demonic) personages are "imagined" in figurative pictorial inventions. Another stylistic device traditionally employed by artists is reduction. This condenses complex facts into simple, "abstract" or ornamental forms. And finally there is the timeless expression of the cultural "narrative" handed down in stories, myths, and rituals, which includes an additional performative quality. These three artistic principles structure the exhibition's dramaturgy.

Ana Mendieta: Ánima, Silueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece), Oaxaca, Mexico, 1976

color silent movie transferred to video, 3 Min.
Courtesy the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection & Galerie Lelong, New York
© Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection

Click on image to enlarge.

A Walkthrough of Exhibition
A prologue introduces the first part of the exhibition "Signs of Life". Nancy Spero's key work "Black and Red III" (private collection, Brussels) forms a fifty meter long passageway into the world of pictorial imagination. It culminates in an exhibition space that could also be described as the 'Chamber of Goddesses.' It is no coincidence that this continues with Louise Bourgeois (Fragile Goddess, 1970) and Ana Mendieta (Ánima. Silueta de Fuego, video, 1976), two further great pioneers of 1960s and 1970s art. With Spero, they outline a brief historical basis for the exhibition. (Sadly, after Ana Mendieta's untimely death in 1986, the two other artists are no longer with us. Spero and Bourgeois, who were both actively involved in the selection of their works for this exhibition, died in Autumn 2009, respectively Spring 2010.)

Kiki Smith: Eve, 2001

Manzini (resin and marble dust), graphite, 57.2 x 22.9 x 17.1 cm
Courtesy the artist and The Pace Gallery New York
© Kiki Smith

Click on image to enlarge.

It is inconceivable that the younger artists could engage these existential themes or draw on the ancient symbols and myths with the same lightness and matter of course without the groundwork of this 1960s and 1970s generation. Kiki Smith is a further key figure. Her personal involvement ensured that she is represented with three of her most significant sculptures - "Lilith" (1994, Metropolitan Museum of Art), "Eve" (2001, The Pace Gallery), and "Virgin Mary" (1992, artist's collection). By refiguring these three central figures in the history of culture and religion, she is reflecting on how divine principles and myths have been determined throughout the course of history. Returning the figures to their undogmatic origins, her work attempts to endow these figures with a validity for the present age. The other two works focus on the Medusa myth, treating the motif in different ways. The first of these is Marina Abramović's "Dragon Head #4" (1990), a video recording of the first performance she made after separating from Ulay, her partner in life and art, and the second is Belgian artist Peter Buggenhout's "Gorgo #8", an abstract construction made of hair, blood, and dirt. And finally, Nathalie Djurberg (winner of the silver lion at the 2009 Venice Art Bienniale for a promising young artist) uses plasticine figures to present a malicious tale of mythic dimensions.

Sigalit Landau's video "Dead Sea" (2005; she will be representing Israel at the Venice Art Biennale in 2011) forms the connecting link to the second part of the exhibition. This performance work, as poetic as it is highly political, stands at the center of the exhibition (and not coincidentally at the center of the exhibition poster). It shows how the artist emerges as a 'young goddess' of the twenty-first century from a watermelon spiral floating on the surface of the Dead Sea. In doing so, it quite manifestly combines the exhibition's three principles "imagination", "abstraction", and "narrative".

The second chapter in the exhibition "Signs of Life" comprises three rooms. These are devoted to the significance that signs, symbols, and ornaments have in the present day. The Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed takes shapes and forms found in three great monotheistic world religions and combines these with microbiological depictions of cell structures to create a rhythmic animated drawing. Mariella Mosler, working in the tradition of so-called 'Hair Art,' crochets jewelry from human hair. And finally, Philip Taaffe installed the cabinet "Sanctuary" exclusively for the Kunstmuseum Lucerne. This presents the sum total of Taaffe's decade-long occupation with the life of natural and cultural forms.

The third and final section in this exhibition thematizes myths, stories, and rituals. The first of these rooms exhibits Amar Kanwar's "The Lightning Testimonies" (2007). This was one of the most noted works at the 2007 documenta 12. The 8 channel video installation is testimony to the Indian filmmaker's endeavor to find images that counter the forgetting of a past. The film sequences deal with the manner in which Indian populations are drawing on their past tradition in an attempt to work through the existential threat to their way of life arising from military, political, and religious conflicts.

The exhibition continues onto the island of the 'Waqwaq' tree. This tree oracle appears in many myths, including the legend of Alexander the Great. Here, it gets a surprising update in Indian artist Bharti Kher's "Solarum Series I" (2007-2008, collection Ursula Hauser). Following this stopover, the visitor is led along the exhibition's meandering path across Su-Mei Tse's floor piece "Proposition de détour" (Yeh Rong Jay Culture and Art Foundation, Taiwan). This work combines the early historical form of the labyrinth, in its most famous rendering in the Chartres Cathedral, and the topos of the Persian garden of paradise. The Finnish artist Tea Mäkipäa's monumental photographic work "World of Plenty" (2005–2006) forms the pendant to this piece. This paradisal 'world picture,' which spans 26 meters, is as seductive as it is confusing, oscillating between utopia, visions, and illusions.

The exhibition concludes with an epilogue that literally brings the related themes back to the ground in the here and now. The African-American artist "Sanford Biggers" uses dance as a form of expression that embraces all cultures. In his video "Creation/Dissipation" hip-hop dancers celebrate the figure of a sand mandala as they give visual appearance to the fundamental principals of becoming and dissolution, order and chaos.

Essential to this exhibition, which is organised as a transitional passageway, is its diversity, not only of the exhibited works but also the media employed. What forms the exhibition's connective tissue are the different ways in which the exhibited artists draw on motifs and contents that frequently extend to ancient times, and even to prehistory. The century old tradition of these shapes and forms imbues them with a greater force and an immense richness of meaning. The contemporary artists' reinterpretation of these forms enables a deeper understanding of human existence, even of the current day. The forms symbolize archetypal and universal principals, and serve as the models for defining world-views and explaining the world - whether it is the world of the twenty-first century or that witnessing the birth of modern man 35'000 years ago.

Curated by Peter Fischer and Brigitt Bürgi.

Supported by: ArtClubLuzern, Artephila Stiftung, Luzerner Kantonalbank, APG

A richly illustrated publication with individual texts on all the exhibited works accompanies the exhibition:

"Lebenszeichen / Signs of Life". Altes Wissen in der zeitgenössischen Kunst / Ancient Knowledge in Contemporary Art"". Edited by Peter Fischer and Brigitt Bürgi, with texts by Peter Fischer and Katja Lenz, as well as an essay by Natalie Fritz, Monika Glavac, Anna-Katharina Höpflinger, Marie-Theres Mäder, and Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati. Lucerne: Museum of Art Lucerne; Heidelberg: Kehrer-Verlag, 2010. German/English, 144 pages, hardcover. ISBN 978-3-86828-161-3.

The Museum of Art Lucerne, in celebration of its anniversary 'Ten Years Museum of Art in the KKL Lucerne,' is presenting the ambitious thematic exhibition "Signs of Life". This ties in with the successful exhibition trilogy in Lucerne: "Another World: 12 Bedroom Stories" (2002), "me&more" (2003) as well as a "kind of magic" (2005).

The Museum of Art Lucerne has been housed in the KKL Lucerne, built by the French star architect Jean Nouvel, since 2000. The outstanding exhibition spaces are located immediately beneath the KKL's imposing roof. And thanks to the world-famous concert hall it enjoys an immediate proximity to high-carat performances as during the Lucerne Festival, the international top-event on the classical music calendar.