'Less is a Bore' exhibition and artist talk with Raymond Barion

Less is a Bore. Reflections on Memphis at KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation in Düsseldorf presents the design universe of the Italian group and its predecessors in relation to works by international artists, spanning a historical timeline into the present.

The exhibition - that runs from 29 October 2016 until 11 February 2017 - not only includes work by Raymond Barion but also an artist talk with Eva Berendes and Raymond Barion hosted by curator Julia Höner on Thursday, November 17th. 

The exhibition illuminates the role of Memphis as a reference-laden, postmodern play with materials, forms and their functions that permeates the boundaries between art, architecture, design and everyday culture. Traces of this approach are still discernible in art today. Less is a Bore sketches the history of a style that draws on the phenomenon of mass culture as well as fashion and cultural history and exhibits a clearly obsessive enthusiasm for the expressive power of surfaces. The Memphis characteristic of tilt effects and the ambiguity in appearance between a can and a creature, between furniture and figurative form especially resonate with those art works in the exhibition, which change between architectural model and autonomous, aesthetic illusion. Furthermore, the works of art in the exhibition occuping a latent proximity to the commodities of our everyday lives and thus playfully challenging our ideas about function link back to Memphis.

A catalogue will be published by Spector Books with texts by Julia Höner, Tido von Oppeln, Oliver Tepel. For more information, visit the Arthena Foundation website. 

 

Image: Raymond Barion, Pyramid, 1983. Acrylic on canvas, 180 x 180 cm. 

Publication date: 26 Oct '16