Heute Nacht geträumt: An exhibition by Ruth Buchanan

Ur, 1992, patinated bronze, 47 x 27.5 x 23 cm © Leiko Ikemura and VG Bildkunst, 2022. / Photo: Martin P. Bühler, Kunstmuseum Basel, 2019.

From what point does the contemporary begin? Which documents say what? Where does my body belong? Will I come back? At the heart of the questions that shape Ruth Buchanan’s exhibition Heute Nacht geträumt at Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart is the desire to reconsider the paradigms under which museums might function today.

Museums have been asked to be many things over the centuries: they have housed artworks bought, gifted, and stolen; they have been institutions of beauty, pain, and inspiration. In many ways, they have been one of the spheres that combine the complexity of what it is to be a human in the world and a participant in the systems that form this same world.

At the center of Aotearoa New Zealand artist Ruth Buchanan’s practice are the spatio-political dimensions of organisational systems. She brings this lens to the Kunstmuseum Basel by deep-diving into its contemporary holdings. The collection, the building, the exhibition history, all become part of an engine of research that produce a reflection of the procedures that have shaped this institution. Buchanan’s museum-wide installation spans captioning systems all the way through to architectural intervention, encouraging a rethinking of how we participate in and shape public life.

 

Artists: Francis Alÿs, Carl Andre, Wolf Barth, Alexander Birchler, Jonathan Borofsky, Ruth Buchanan, Johannes Burla, Miriam Cahn, Louis Cane, Paul Chan, Walter Dahn, Martin Disler, Edward Dwurnik, Helmut Federle, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Enrique Fontanilles, Günther Förg, Andrea Fraser, Katharina Fritsch, Bernard Frize, Theaster Gates, Gary Glassman, Robert Gober, Douglas Gordon, Mireille Gros, Wade Guyton, Michael Heizer, Al Held, Lori Hersberger, Eric Hattan, Gary Hill, Andreas His, Teresa Hubbard, Leiko Ikemura, Ilya Kabakov, William Kentridge, Heiner Kielholz, Alexej Koschkarow, Sol LeWitt, Nicola de Maria, Reinhad Mucha, Markus Müller, Werner von Mutzenbecher, Bruce Nauman, Henrik Olesen, Gabriel Orozco, Elizabeth Peyton, Jean Pfaff, Markus Raetz, Pipilotti Rist, Sarkis, Richard Serra, Len Schaller, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Monika Sosnowska, Anselm Stalder, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Cy Twombly, André Valensi, Hannah Villiger, Jeff Wall, Federico Winkler, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Rémy Zaugg, Heimo Zobernig.

 

Source: Kunstmuseum Basel

 

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