French Fries is pleased to announce werden und vergehen. Zustandsberichte aus der Sammlung, an exhibition at Kunstmuseum Luzern. What do the contents of Beuys’  look like 50 years later? What remains of Marion Baruch’s performance? How should the elements of Franz Erhard Walter’s Gesang der Schreitsockel be put together? The collection curator Alexandra Blättler will take you on a trip to the inside of the collection and allow you to share her in questions, doubts and solutions. This year’s collection presentation is dedicated to transience in the broadest sense. Be it the fleetingness of performances and ephemera, or sculptures made of chocolate or fat – many works of art were not intended to last forever. Yet light or climactic changes also have an impact on materials considered to be durable. Preservation is one of the four major tasks of the Kunstmuseum Luzern. What this exhibition aims to explain in greater details is where an institution arrives at its limits and where it generates new insight. To do this it is showing works from different epochs – ranging from the 18th century to today.

Art and transience are often contiguous, be it as a vanitas motif in painting or as an artistic strategy in the 1970s. For his sculpture Fishmann (Birth-Death-Fishman) the artist Paul Thek had a latex impression made of his own body, which was originally presented hanging from the ceiling. Over the course of time, however, the material has become so fragile that the Fishmann can now only be presented inside a protective display case. Giuseppe Penone’s Albero di undici metri also presents particular conservation challenges. In concept art in particular, overcoming materiality led to new approaches. In the series Silueta Works in Iowa, Ana Mendieta put on her performances not in front of an audience, but transposed instead into a photographic examination of nature and body. Urs Lüthi, David Weiss and Willy Spiller also stage their
directly for the camera. Many artists bring about changeability deliberately, like, for example, Dieter Rot with his Plexiglas box full of chocolate or Jan Dibbets with his Grass table.

The exhibition werden und vergehen. Zustandsberichte aus der Sammlung (becoming and decaying. Status reports from the collection) examines in various ways the precarious status of art and how artists deal with this. One of the exhibition highlights are the works by Joseph Beuys, who would have been 100 years old this year. In 1969 the action artist installed his legendary Lucerne Fat Room at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, the remains of which are preserved in the Fat Box and are now being presented in the collection exhibition.

With Vito Acconci, Robert Amrein, René Auberjonois, Marion Baruch, Auguste Baud-Bovy, Joseph Beuys, Alighiero Boetti, Heidi Bucher, Michael Buthe, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Jan Dibbets, Charles Georges Dufresne, Anton Egloff, Hans Emmenegger, Leopold Haefliger, Anton Henning, Anton Herrmann, Matthew Day Jackson, Vassily Khmeluk, Joseph Kosuth, Urs Lüthi, Ana Mendieta, Meret Oppenheim, Giuseppe Penone, Dieter Roth, Christoph Rütimann, Willy Spiller, Ernesto Tatafiore, Paul Thek, André Thomkins, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Félix Vallotton, Maurice de Vlaminck, Aldo Walker, Franz Erhard Walther, David Weiss, Marc Zumstein, Robert Zünd

curated by Alexandra Blättler

20.03. 21.11.2021