Visiting the world -
Photography from the UBS Art Collection
Over the past decades photography, has been established as one of the most important art forms in contemporary art. This is also reflected in The UBS Art Collection, which comprises important photographs by internationally renowned artists from different generations who have emerged from various cultural backgrounds.
Based on a diversity of conceptual and aesthetic practices and including smaller, medium and large-scale formats, the photographic works and sometimes work-series in the collection refer to the individual as much as they represent notions concerning our culture.
They capture moments of our social behavior, represent aspects of culturally determined surroundings and they confront us with the changing “surfaces” of landscapes, cities, public places or interiors whilst at the same time creating impressive and metaphorical images. Based on their individual pictorial qualities many of the collection’s photographs are almost gateways to the world.
The online-exhibition “Visiting the World”, curated by Barbara Hofmann-Johnson, invites us to see a few of these places and presents a selection of photographs composed and created with a sublime sense for imagery. It includes works by Doug Aitken (USA), Olivo Barbieri (I), Jean-Marc Bustamante (F), Olafur Eliasson (DK), Andreas Gursky (D), Fischli/Weiss (CH), Doug Hall (USA), Candida Höfer (D), Hubbard/Birchler (IRL/CH), Axel Hütte (D), Naoya Hatakeyama (J), Walter Niedermayr (I) Robert Polidori (CAN), Beat Streuli (CH), Thomas Struth (D), Massimo Vitali (I).
Their works thematically range from photographic reflections on aspects of modern civilization, such as speed and mobility, with its modern vehicles (Aitken, Fischli/Weiss), to the observation of mass-cultural behavior, showing crowds of people in everyday situations, amongst them their leisure pursuits (Gursky, Niedermayr, Streuli, Struth, Vitali). Other photographs presented in the online exhibition hold on to the beauty of landscapes (Eliasson, Hütte) and make us aware of the unexpected beauty of cityscapes (Barbieri, Bustamante, Polidori). Further to that they draw on the rich details of our cultural heritage and ideals as are evident in architectural motifs such as museums, universities and interiors (Hall, Höfer). Taken at different places around the world, the photographs offer a panoramic view of our contemporary life where the cinema, representing fictional places and the realm of fantasy and imagination, also has its place (Hubbard/Birchler). Metaphorically traveling all these selected places, the exhibition invites us to do what the artists, according to their own motivations, concepts and practices in the realm of photography had previously done, “Visiting the World”.
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