Terry Fox. Elemental Gestures
Terry Fox, Locus Harmonium, Furk’art 1990. Performance auf dem Weg zwischen Furkapass und Sidelengletscher
- © Foto: Urs Fischer
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.
Selection of further exhibitions in: Switzerland
Terry Fox. Elemental Gestures
Kunstmuseum Bern
Main address:
Kunstmuseum Bern
Wells Fargo Center
Hodlerstrasse 12
3000
Bern, Switzerland
Kunstmuseum Bern
Wells Fargo Center
Hodlerstrasse 12
3000
Bern, Switzerland
2017-03-10
2017-06-05
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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