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The Kunsthaus Glarus is showing three parallel exhibitions by Alexandra Bachzetsis, Johanna Billing and Falke Pisano & Ana Roldan as well as pictures by the collectors Robert and Ruth Jenny in dialogue with the collection of the Glarner Kunstverein.

In the three contemporary presentations the discussion is focused on artistic working methods and work developments, which are designed to be open and process-oriented. The works of all the invited artists have a collaborative and interdisciplinary background. Starting with the theme of dance and performance, the artists take the risk of crossing over into other genres and place the creative process of the works, rather than their final form, in the foreground. There are clear connections and common interests between the three positions; but they have been conceived fully independently of each other as self-contained presentations. They continue a thematic debate about performative strategies in contemporary art, which started at the beginning of 2010 with a group exhibition under the title "PERFORMATIVE ATTITUDES" and is now being extended in the Kunsthaus Glarus and in parallel at Alte Fabrik in Rapperswil.

Alexandra Bachzetsis (b. 1974, lives in Basel) is a performance artist and choreographer and for some time now she has also been appearing with her work in the context of art. Her inventions oscillate constantly between dance performance and the demands of art. In the Kunsthaus Glarus she is showing two works where this interdisciplinary aspect and the interaction between object, body and space are especially emphasised. Her work "Secret Instructions", a collaboration with the graphic designer Julia Born, consists of six scripts for plays, a printed programme, which is handed out to the audience, and a performance, which is put on once during the opening and is documented during the exhibition period. The stage instructions for movements within the space are from six different twentieth-century plays by Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, Berthold Brecht, Anton Chekhov, Sarah Kane and Harold Pinter and are the main focus on the stage. In the script, all the spoken texts have been deleted so that only the instructions for movement on the stage remain. One result is that different styles of the playwrights regarding stage movement become visible. Another is that the instructions become freely interpretable for the actors and produce no fixed dramaturgy. Only the movement sequences relating to the objects that are used in the plays determine the choreography. The project is made up of a trilogy of performances, which have already been shown at De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam and the Theaterhaus Gessnerallee in Zurich and are now guest performances in the context of art in the Kunsthaus Glarus. In addition, Alexandra Bachzetsis is also showing a new two-channel video work entitled "Rehearsal (Ungoing)". This piece deals with irreversible and reversible changes of states of matter and things. A piece of choreography for two hands that pick, move and manipulate various objects at first orderly arranged on a simple table, it is obsessive in a matter-of-fact way. The performer, her face outside of the frame, documents each phase of the process with a Polaroid camera. Attempts at restoring order meet practical difficulties; some actions must remain incomplete while others are brought to a successful end.

Johanna Billing: I'm lost without your rhythm, 2009

Produktionsstill

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Johanna Billing (b. 1973, lives in Stockholm) is showing the video work "I'm Lost Without Your Rhythm" (2009). It deals with a live event in choreography, contemporary dance and live improvisation, which took place with amateur dancers and acting students during the "Periferic 8 Biennale of Contemporary Art" in Romania in October 2008, in association with the Swedish choreographer Anna Vnuk. Through several days Billing documented this public event and later edited the material to make a film loop through-composed with music and rhythm. The centre of attention is not the staging of a complete performance but the process of live improvisation between choreographer, dancers, local musicians and the audience. Billing works without any script. Her starting point is a certain idea about historical and social associations in a particular context and over a long period she observes the dynamics of the place and its local society. She then lets the involved persons improvise freely. She always puts a meaningful selection of music in relation to the existing context. In the edited film there is an atmosphere somewhere between a copy of reality and a fiction. Only there does the feeling of a silent choreography with invisible rules come into play. The participation of the actors, improvisation and the open structure of the working process are the foundations of her work, and can be found again in various projects, such as here in a dance project or in the sailing trip of a music group (This is how we walk on the moon, 2007) or a children's music school in Zagreb, where an English song is being rehearsed (Magical World, 2005). Billing's painstakingly composed film technique aims a simplicity of form, oscillating between surface and depth. The presentation of the film in the exhibition space is also always spatially composed and has traits of installation.

Falke Pisano & Ana Roldan: Dynamo, 2008

Detail

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Falke Pisano & Ana Roldan are showing a work jointly developed by the two artists, a three-part textile work originally conceived as a floor covering and with a drawing of each artist imprinted on it. This floor covering was seen as a playground for several objects which originated in earlier exhibitions and installations of the artists. While the textile works present a common base, objects of Pisano and Roldan that carry their history and meaning with them are placed in relationship to each other, thus forming a new context for interpretation. On a textual level, for a script, three scenes are described on the play list with sixteen positions of the objects, which were changed in past exhibitions over the whole exhibition period.

In Glarus a new version is to be seen, where this choreography is now only described, without being put into practice. In this way, the movements of the objects in space take place only in the imagination of the viewer. The relationship between instruction and realisation thus becomes an open process, in which the viewer also plays a role. Besides Dynamo Pisano and Roldan each are showing an additional existing work, on which basis the cooperation has been developed. In this sense the focus of presentation in Glarus is shifted towards documentation and the history of the development of the piece as opposed to the original display with a more active performative character.

Ana Roldan (b. 1977 Mexico City, lives in Zurich) studied linguistics and history before she turned to the visual arts. Her works, often based on sign systems marked by cultural codes, which have to be decoded, constantly challenge the viewers into interaction. The work is completed only in relation to them and their cognitive participation. In this manner her work "The Play: One self act, the battle after the goal" (2006) again presents a script for a paradoxical play encouraging the viewer to participate. The works of the Dutch artist Falke Pisano (b. 1978, lives in Berlin) come from her interest in thinking about the possibilities of language when analysing art works. Her main focus is on the conditions and mechanisms of modernist sculpture as well as the theme of abstraction in itself. In videos and lecture-performances she tries to work out the substance of sculptural objects with the resources of language and text constructions. In this way Pisano moves into the space between artist and viewer, or production and reception. In her works the process of perception is thus made available to experience and her personal commentary alters the way things are seen. In her two-channel video work "Chillida (Forms and Feelings, 2006)" Pisano approaches photographs of Edoardo Chillida sculptures in a contemplative way of looking and speaking.

Glarner private collectors in Dialogue - Robert and Ruth Jenny

For the exhibition in the two basement rooms Robert and Ruth Jenny have been invited to show a selection of their pictures in dialogue with pictures of the collection of Kunsthaus Glarus. The couple own a number of works from what is called the "Nuova Scuola Romana" or "Officina San Lorenzo", including works of Piero Pizzi Cannella (b. 1955), Bruno Ceccobelli (b. 1952) and Gianni Dessì (b. 1955), who worked in the former pasta factory of Cerere pursuing common interests in a symbolic abstraction in painting. Shared themes are experiments with materials and paints and an interest in mysteriousness, archetypes, nature symbols and alchemy. In addition to other Italian artists like Arcangelo (b. 1956), Gianriccardo Piccoli (b. 1942), Giulio Paolini (b. 1940) and Mimmo Palladino (b. 1948), representatives of Arte Povera or Transavanguardia, the "Neue Wilde" of Italy, in the collection there are also works by Pierre Soulages (b. 1919), a representative of French Abstract Expressionism.

The collection reveals a strong interest in expressive abstraction, enigmatic and mysterious contents as well as metaphysical transparency. The latter is also shown in the interest in painting and handcrafts from Asia, Latin America and Africa, which are also represented in the collection. Another group of works in the exhibition concerns some of the history of Gartenflügel, gallery and cultural forum in Ziegelbrücke, which is run by the Jennys. In this and other ways a number of works by artists from Glarus were taken into the collection, including some by Ulrich Bruppacher, Greta Leuzinger and others. The Jennys present a collection characterised by very personal decisions without being narrowly systematic, for once not only in their own four walls but for a broader public in the context of a museum. In dialogue with the collection of the Glarner Kunstverein new neighbours and interconnections come about. Individual groups of works supplement each other or open up fresh ways of seeing both collections, which can also lead to interesting questions about the differences between public and private collection and the various kinds of logic involved in collecting in general.