Friday, 10 August 2018, 07 pm

As indicated by his work at the Kunsthalle Bern, Harald Szeemann realised as early as the 1960s that the exhibition interested him as a medium of art. This was the decade when artists expanded the notion of the work of art to include the dimensions of space and time and had started to experiment with various installation processes. Szeemann made his own contribution as part of this development and, in doing so, he became what Oskar Bätschmann has called “the creator of personal visions and competitor of the exhibition artist.” Showing is an act through which to create attention, to address the very process of seeing, and to make the visibility of certain artworks possible in the first place. An exhibition understood in this way is a format which, as a dispositif, creates the framework for an enhanced perception (of the artwork) by the public.

Roman Kurzmeyer is Curator of the Ricola Collection and teaches at the Art Institute of the Academy of Art and Design in Basel. In 2007, he edited (together with Tobia Bezzola) the catalogue of all exhibitions by Harald Szeemann, which was published by Edition Voldemeer (Zürich).

Image: Grandfather: A Pioneer like us, Kunsthalle Bern, 2018, installation view Gerechtigkeitsgasse 74, Bern
Photo: Gunnar Meier