Description
Book launch of "Beat Streuli - Public Works 1996-2011"
Swiss artist Beat Streuli (*1957) takes the urban environment and its inhabitants as the central motif of his work. His photographs are neither documentary nor conceptual: rather they lead us to a form of aesthetics that one could describe as the "glamour of the usual."
This monograph is a survey of his oeuvre of the last 15 years, which includes billboards and large-scale window installations on the facades of public buildings, and a selection of his installations of slide and video projections. Streuli by Streuli: an extensive image sequence mostly taken by the artist himself documents Streuli's rejection of the classic museum exhibition context. Instead he takes the photographs back to their place of origin—public space.
With newly commissioned texts by Raymond Bellour, Roberta Valtorta, and Jonathan Watkins.
Published by JRP/Ringier with the Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, Milan, and the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.
More info : www.beatstreuli.com
Jonathan Watkins has been Director of Ikon Gallery since 1999. Previously he worked as Curator of the Serpentine Gallery and Director of Chisenhale Gallery. His tenure at the Chisenhale Gallery saw a rise in its international profile, with a number of its artists moving on to win the Turner Prize. He was Artistic Director of the Biennale of Sydney in 1998 and has worked internationally in Beijing, Venice, Turin, Milan, Shanghai, Sharjah and Palestine. He was also on the curatorial team for Facts of Life: Contemporary Japanese Art (Hayward Gallery, London 2001). Watkins is a prolific writer on contemporary art, his recent essays focusing on the work of artists such as Giuseppe Penone, Martin Creed, Yang Zhenzhong, and Noguchi Rika. He was the author of the Phaidon monograph on Japanese artist On Kawara.