Corpse of Art (IRWIN)
When asked by Marie Grafieaux if I could curate an exhibition in her non-commercial gallery called NuN, while looking at the space (a small "grey cube" that you literally enter through the window) a piece came directly to my mind: IRWIN's Corpse of Art...
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Since its foundation in 1983, the Slovenian collective IRWIN has been investigating the esthetic, political and historical influence of the early artistic avant-garde. References to Malevich and his use of simple geometrical forms, such as the black square, is found in many of their works. In 1992, for instance, they spread out a square (22 x 22 meter) piece of black cloth on Moscow's Red Square (Black Square on Red Square), and in 2003/4 they built a perfect copy of the coffin Suetin had designed for Malevich and exhibited it with a waxwork body as the Corpse of Art. This was an artwork about art history, but also about the absurdity and the cruelty of exhibitions. A recreation of a famous exhibition, it was an "exhibition of an exhibition" that retained all the bizarre and eccentric qualities of the original.
The Corpse of Art
NuN, Berlin (Germany)
April 26 — May 11, 2014
Curated by Thibaut de Ruyter
Artist: IRWIN
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