Il Met Breuer
dal 18 Settembre avvia la mostra “Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy” che
affronta il grande tema della cospirazione, che sia politica, culturale ideologica.
Il progetto copre
gli ultimi cinquant’anni, dal 1969 al 2016 con oltre settanta opere di trenta artisti
internazionali.
CS
For
the last 50 years, artists have explored the hidden operations of power and the
symbiotic suspicion between the government and its citizens. Opening at The Met
Breuer on September 18, Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy will be the
first major exhibition to tackle this perennially provocative topic. Covering the
period from 1969 to 2016 and featuring 70 works by 30 artists working in a range
of media—from painting and sculpture to photography, video, and installation art—Everything
Is Connected will present an alternate history of postwar and contemporary art that
is also an archaeology of our troubled times.
The
exhibition is made possible by Andrea Krantz and Harvey Sawikin.
Additional
support is provided by James and Vivian Zelter.
There
are incontrovertible aspects of the postwar period that created a fertile ground
for the figure of conspiracy to loom so large. Foremost among these is the dramatic
expansion in size and complexity of Western democracies and their attendant bureaucracies.
Accordingly, the exhibition will focus on conspiracy in the West and stops short
of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Tracing
the simultaneous development of two kinds of art about conspiracy, the exhibition
will be divided into two parts. The first is comprised of works by artists who hew
strictly to the public record, uncovering hidden webs of deceit—from the shell corporations
of a New York real estate conglomerate to the vast, interconnected networks encompassing
politicians, businessmen, and arms dealers. The second part will feature artists
who dive headlong into the fever dreams of the disaffected, creating fantastical
works that nevertheless uncover uncomfortable truths in an age of information overload
and weakened trust in institutions.
Many
of the featured artists occupy tangential if not adversarial positions in relation
to the movements with which they are commonly associated. By injecting the relatively
apolitical styles of Pop, Conceptualism, and Appropriation Art with the normally
veiled or repressed real-world content that invisibly shapes experience, they take
a less passive and ironic and more proactive stance against the consumerism, bureaucracies,
and mass media that are the inescapable givens of modern life.
The
exhibition will be accompanied by the installation Jane and Louise Wilson: Stasi
City on view in the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography at The
Met Fifth Avenue from September 18, 2018 through March 31, 2019. Jane and Louise
Wilson's (British, born 1967) Stasi City (1997) is widely considered one of the
most important works of video art of the last half-century, advancing the medium
to a newly theatrical and immersive experience. Filmed during a fellowship in Berlin
in 1996, this four-channel video installation is a dizzying tour of the former headquarters
of the East German secret police ( Staatssicherheit) housed behind a nondescript
row of buildings in the former East Berlin.
Everything
Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy is curated by Doug Eklund, Curator in the Department
of Photographs, and Ian Alteveer, Aaron I. Fleischman Curator, Department of Modern
and Contemporary Art, with assistance from Meredith Brown, Research Associate in
the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Beth Saunders, Assistant Curator
in the Department of Photographs, all at The Met.
The
exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by The Met and distributed
by Yale University Press.
The
catalogue is made possible by the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Inc.
Programs
Programs
and events will include a dedicated Teen Studio on December 1 and Family Tours on
October 13 and December 8.
The
exhibition will be featured on the Museum's
website, as well on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using the hashtags #MetArtandConspiracy
and #MetBreuer #MetArtandConspiracy
