Terry Fox. Elemental Gestures

(Friday) (Monday)

As

was popular in art at the time, Terry Fox strived to conflate art and life in

his work, achieving this synthesis in the shape of elementary gestures. Consequently

he very early abandoned traditional forms of art such as painting. Instead he

began to stage everyday situations as art performances and within this

framework increasingly resorted to implementing his own body as part of the

work. In his art he explored personal experiences and his own spontaneous

perception of life. The labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral played a key role in his

work. He chanced upon it while traveling in 1971 and intensively perused its

relevance over the next eleven years. For him it was a metaphor for his own

path in life, which overshadowed by sickness – while paths through a labyrinth

inevitably lead to its center, there are so many twists and turns that we lose

track of the course we have taken. Orientation is difficult in a labyrinth. It

is adversities such as these that Terry Fox scrutinizes in his work and which

make complex text arrangements and secret codes so intriguing to the artist. From

the mid-70s, Terry Fox utilized space as a resonance chamber for his sound

performances by spanning piano strings from wall to wall. With this approach he

made a profound impact on sound art in Europe. Additionally the work of Adolf

Wölfli and Robert Walser fascinated him. The exhibition also explores this

facet of his work. The show commences with a performance staged by Terry Fox at

Furk’Art 1990, where he also presented an installation. The exhibition comprises

a selection that represents the wide scope in Terry Fox’s use of media in his

art and seeks to comprehend the scope and meanings of his thematic universe. At

the same time it probes the issue of exhibiting performance art, a problem that

will be addressed in detail in an accompanying symposium. The

exhibition is a collaborative project of the Kunstmuseum Bern; Akademie der

Künste, Berlin; BAM – Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mons; and the Von der Heydt  Museum, Wuppertal.

Kunstmuseum Bern
Hodlerstrasse 12
3000 Bern
Switzerland
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http://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch/en/see/today/658-terry-fo...

Tags

Art, Museum, Kunst, Berlin,

Selection of further exhibitions in: Switzerland

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Zürich

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01.01.2016 - 01.01.2030
Landesmuseum Zürich
Museumstrasse 2
Zürich

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Terry Fox. Elemental Gestures Kunstmuseum Bern Main address: Kunstmuseum Bern Hodlerstrasse 12 3000 Bern, Switzerland Kunstmuseum Bern Hodlerstrasse 12 3000 Bern, Switzerland As

was popular in art at the time, Terry Fox strived to conflate art and life in

his work, achieving this synthesis in the shape of elementary gestures. Consequently

he very early abandoned traditional forms of art such as painting. Instead he

began to stage everyday situations as art performances and within this

framework increasingly resorted to implementing his own body as part of the

work. In his art he explored personal experiences and his own spontaneous

perception of life. The labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral played a key role in his

work. He chanced upon it while traveling in 1971 and intensively perused its

relevance over the next eleven years. For him it was a metaphor for his own

path in life, which overshadowed by sickness – while paths through a labyrinth

inevitably lead to its center, there are so many twists and turns that we lose

track of the course we have taken. Orientation is difficult in a labyrinth. It

is adversities such as these that Terry Fox scrutinizes in his work and which

make complex text arrangements and secret codes so intriguing to the artist. From

the mid-70s, Terry Fox utilized space as a resonance chamber for his sound

performances by spanning piano strings from wall to wall. With this approach he

made a profound impact on sound art in Europe. Additionally the work of Adolf

Wölfli and Robert Walser fascinated him. The exhibition also explores this

facet of his work. The show commences with a performance staged by Terry Fox at

Furk’Art 1990, where he also presented an installation. The exhibition comprises

a selection that represents the wide scope in Terry Fox’s use of media in his

art and seeks to comprehend the scope and meanings of his thematic universe. At

the same time it probes the issue of exhibiting performance art, a problem that

will be addressed in detail in an accompanying symposium. The

exhibition is a collaborative project of the Kunstmuseum Bern; Akademie der

Künste, Berlin; BAM – Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mons; and the Von der Heydt  Museum, Wuppertal.
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