.:. art / the art of movement
Jean Tinguely
October 10, 2024 through February 2, 2025
more pictures .:.
Setting under the huge naves of the Hangar an exhibition of artworks by Jean Tinguely (Fribourg, 1925-Bern, 1991) required a lot of effort. The staff and the crew needed time, complicated instructions, an unusual amount of patience, and cranes.
.:. Tinguely’s works are tall constructions of metal and plastic
objets trouvés, often the result of previously dismantled mechanisms, occasionally rich of lights, and very frequently in motion. Indeed, something to write home about.
.:. These machines are immediately
amusing. They capture attention at first sight for their size and the ingeniousness they display. It’s only after a while that we wake up and begin asking ourselves what they are for.
.:. The answer is not easy, and somehow senseless. Tinguely enjoyed provocations. It was here in Milan, for instance, that he celebrated the
Nouveau Réalisme movement (which he took part in) by setting fire to a huge sculpture of male genitalia in front of the cathedral in 1970. Firemen extinguished the burning, not the protest.
.:. The current exhibition in Milan opens the artist’s birth centennial, which will continue at leading museums and galleries throughout Europe like the Beaubourg in Paris, the Louisiana in Humlebæk, the Tinguely Museum in Basel (the largest permanent exhibition of his kinetic works) and the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Tinguely’s native town. Fribourg’s collection also celebrates his colleague and spouse
Niki de Saint Phalle, whose works are now on display in Milan at the
MUDEC. Don’t miss the couple.