A Collection Exhibition on the Topic Sculpture

In the exhibition “Pedestal Stories” the Art Museum Graubünden makes sculpture the issue. The show with works from the collection documents how flexible and wide the term sculpture is today. Sculptures placed on a high pedestal are history. With the programmatic dismantling of the pedestal and the inclusion of the viewer sculpture has democratized and socialized itself. The exhibition “Pedestal Stories” shows works, which were created in the last 80 years or so and which exemplify this development. Each room is dedicated to a theme: diversity, habitation, era, and painting sculpture.

The collection exhibition with 33 works is spread across four rooms in the 1st basement of the new building. The introduction to the topic “diversity” in the main room is Mirko Baseglia’s prompt boxes, which at the same time are also an analogy of the exhibition title. In the case of Baseglia the stories coming from the prompt boxes seem to be whispered to the visitors. Also shown here are the works by Evelina Cajacob, Martin Disler, Bethan Huws, Vaclav Pozarek, Jürg Stäuble or Not Vital. Their setting in the room and their materiality could hardly be more diverse: wood, bronze, fur, terracotta, neon or water. In the case of Roman Signer’s object even the factor time plays an important role.
The second room addresses the “habitation”. Here Kurt Sigrist’s wood sculpture stands at the centre. The “habitation” is one of Sigrist’s basic themes. With it he takes up questions concerning place and world, rootedness and mobility, time and place. The house is a symbol of the need for protection and safety, whether as a simple and modest shelter, such as the stable by Gabriela Gerber & Lucas Bardill, or for silent reflection and as religious site as with Franz Eggenschwiler’s small temple.
Dominik Zehnder’s erratic boulder in the 3rd room regarding the topic “era”, allows us to look back from the distant future at the Anthropocene, the geological era of human beings. What remains of the present? In the case of Corsin Fontana, Daniel Spoerri and Dieter Roth transformations and decomposition processes are part of their works made of organic materials. While the Schweinsblasenskulptur (pig’s bladder sculpture) by Fontana or the Zunge (tongue) by Not Vital also show the properties of cult objects.
In the 4th room on the topic “Malereiskulptur” (painting sculpture) two paintings by Augusto Giacometti are in dialogue with an expansive, painted flat work by Adrian Schiess. With his rendering of butterflies Augusto Giacometti road-tested his way into abstraction. With the title of the work Butterfly Schiess relates his painting to Giacometti. In the case of Stefan Gritsch colour turns into sculpture. The boundaries between painting and sculpture become blurred, and with Hugo Suter the painting assemblage in the showcase-like box becomes a still life painting of a bouquet of flowers. Sara Masüger’s plant-like sculpture bears traces of her own body; the processual is part of her work. Finally Pascale Wiedemann sets her items of clothing moulded in polyester resin in dialogue with the centuries old painting tradition of the self-portrait.


With: Mirko Baselgia, Flurin Bisig, Evelina Cajacob, Markus Casanova, Martin Disler, Franz Eggenschwiler, Corsin Fontana, Gabriela Gerber & Lukas Bardill, Stefan Gritsch, Hermann Hubacher, Bethan Huws, Leiko Ikemura, Sara Masüger, Erica Pedretti, Vaclav Pozarek, Dieter Roth, Christian Rothacher, Adrian Schiess, Roman Signer, Kurt Sigrist, Matias Spescha, Daniel Spoerri, Jürg Stäuble, Hugo Suter, Not Vital, Pascale Wiedemann and Dominik Zehnder.