Hauser & Wirth | A painter… of sorts; Allan Kaprow: Selected Works 1953 – 1975 | Zurich
January 20 – March 12, 2022
A painter… of sorts; Allan Kaprow: Selected Works 1953 – 1975
Hauser & Wirth
In-Person Viewing:
Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zürich, Switzerland
Virtual Viewing:
https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/35759-allan-kaprow-zurich-limmatstrasse-2022/
This January, Hauser & Wirth brings the work of Allan Kaprow, one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century, to its gallery on Limmatstrasse. With the invention of ‘Happenings’ and ‘Environments,’ Kaprow embarked upon a career of intellectually rigorous, site-specific, and timed works that defied commoditization and ultimately gave birth to performance and installation art. While Kaprow’s radical innovations in the realm of performance shifted the course of 20th-century American art, he began his career as a painter, studying with Hans Hofmann and focusing on the medium in the 1950s. ‘A painter… of sorts’ presents paintings and drawings by Kaprow from this period, as well as a selection of his video works from 1975. The exhibition depicts a clear trajectory for the artist’s practice, from paintings and drawings to his performance-based Happenings and videos, highlighting a career-long exploration into the relationship between everyday life and art. ‘Life is much more interesting than art,’ Kaprow wrote. ‘The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.’
Barry Rosen of the Kaprow Estate writes: ‘We today know Kaprow for a Thought, not for his paintings but for another Form entirely. In 1959, Allan Kaprow brought us immediately to a New Discussion (of the links between Art and Life, between our own Lives and Art-making), followed by years of examining this run-in, confusion: the post-World War II pressure to place the meaning of living-in-the-modern-world onto the cultural milieu.’
