Concepts of the All-Over: Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland
Current exhibition
Overview
In Concepts of the All-Over, Museum Haus Konstruktiv is presenting a magnificent group show that celebrates the combining of colors, shapes, light and architecture. As the final exhibition to be held in the ewz Unterwerk Selnau building before the museum moves to the Löwenbräukunst site in spring 2025, it is also a homage to the historical industrial structure that has been our home for over two decades.
Who pays the Bill is the title of the site-specific mural that Christine Streuli (b. 1975 in CH, lives in Berlin, DE) has conceived for the smaller hall on the fourth floor, at the invitation of Haus Konstruktiv. The starting point for this 360° panoramic image is Max Bill’s 1942 painting horizontal-vertikal-diagonal-rhythmus (horizontal-vertical-diagonal-rhythm), which is rhythmically structured by horizontal, vertical and diagonal black strips, and colored inner areas. Enlarged, vertically mirrored in part, and expanded by Streuli, Bill’s construction is integrated into a harmonious-looking whole on the end wall, whereby the strictly ordered composition is steadily undone on both sides. The mural continues across the two narrow walls, initially with black-and-white linear structures on the left and brightly colored fields on the right, and leads to an energetically charged, expressively somber all-over on the entrance wall. The abstract composition is made increasingly dense on both sides by means of figurative motifs, such as folding figures, a peace sign and a globe icon.
The multi-layered panorama can be read as a landscape and, according to Streuli, as a “mood barometer”, in which various themes immanent to painting are negotiated, such as abstraction and figuration, construction and deconstruction, value and revaluation, history and contemporary art. The title is also to be understood in relation to art history and the reception thereof: With Who pays the Bill, the artist is referring on one hand to the Zurich Concretist Max Bill, a central figure not only for Haus Konstruktiv but for Swiss art history in general. On the other hand, the work’s title also calls the very process of writing art history into question. “Who pays, and who actually did pay the bill,” asks Streuli, “when, in art history, predominantly male colleagues were supported, collected and exhibited? Who pays when there is no longer any precise distinction between original and fake, or between truth and deception?” The artist deliberately refrains from giving any concrete answers. But with her painting, she does provide an example of how stimulating and playful the contemplation of painting, and of its ambivalent history, can be.
Christine Streuli, exhibition view, mixed media on the wall.
The multi-layered panorama can be read as a landscape and, according to Streuli, as a “mood barometer”, in which various themes immanent to painting are negotiated, such as abstraction and figuration, construction and deconstruction, value and revaluation, history and contemporary art. The title is also to be understood in relation to art history and the reception thereof: With Who pays the Bill, the artist is referring on one hand to the Zurich Concretist Max Bill, a central figure not only for Haus Konstruktiv but for Swiss art history in general. On the other hand, the work’s title also calls the very process of writing art history into question. “Who pays, and who actually did pay the bill,” asks Streuli, “when, in art history, predominantly male colleagues were supported, collected and exhibited? Who pays when there is no longer any precise distinction between original and fake, or between truth and deception?” The artist deliberately refrains from giving any concrete answers. But with her painting, she does provide an example of how stimulating and playful the contemplation of painting, and of its ambivalent history, can be.
Christine Streuli, exhibition view, mixed media on the wall.
Installation Views
