Exhibition view "Ding Ding"(28.8.2016 – 8.1.2017) Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau Photo: Timo Ullmann, Aarau
In the 1910s the artist Marcel Duchamp radicalised the established concept of art by taking a found object (“objet trouvé”), signing it, placing it on a pedestal and raising it, as a so-called “Readymade”, to the status of a work of art. Since then, object art has evolved in diverse ways. Real objects are recreated in the form of imitations and miniatures, while elsewhere everyday items such as clothes, dishes or furniture are used as materials, cut up, painted and reassembled. The repertoire of object art ranges from reliefs to moving sculptures to accessible architectures.
For the exhibition Ding Ding we went through the depots of the Aargauer Kunsthaus and, in addition to key objects of the collection, unearthed some real trouvailles. The show includes works from the 1930s to the present and ranges from Daniel Spoerri’s assemblages to Roman Signer’s everyday objects to Christian Rothacher’s oddities and Fischli / Weiss’s imitations of objects. Selected loans, including works by Peter Brunner-Brugg, Clare Kenny and Eva Wipf, complete the exhibition. A playful world of things unfolds between pedestals, the floor and the wall.
