The Migros Cooperative, founded in 1925, is currently, with more than one hundred thousand employees, is one of the largest companies in Switzerland and is affiliated with Denner, LeShop.ch, Micas.ch, Migros Bank. The Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst was founded in 1996 with an annual contribution from the Migros Cooperatives calculated as a percentage based on the turnover (for more information or to allow inspiration for some Italian companies see: percentage-cultural-migros .ch).

Although the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst was founded in 1996 from an idea by Arina Kowner and Rein Wolfs, the first nucleus of the museum collection owes its existence to the entrepreneur Gottlieb Duttweiler (founder of the Migros brand) who began buying works of art in mid-fifties of the twentieth century with the aim of supporting local and national artists. Years later, we must say that the works in the collection have a much greater purpouse than they could have as an instance dictated by passion and are now characterized by the interaction with the exhibition activity, a line that is pursued since its foundation in 1996, and which will lead to the acquisition of the new operational headquarters, in the so-called Löwenbräu cultural center.

The Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst can present temporary exhibitions and rotate the works of its own collection in these renovated spaces, covering 1300 square meters, spread over two levels. For exhibitions, the museum makes use of large productions in close collaboration with artists and even with other institutions. The concept of contemporary art is understood as a dynamic temporal determination, which means permanently thinking about the present without forgetting the past, thus opening the history of art to a process in motion and in continuous revision, correction and variation.

While in the seventies purchases focused on works of Minimal Art, German and Swiss art, later the attention shifted to contemporary artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Christoph Büchel, Urs Fischer, Douglas Gordon, Rachel Harrison, Mark Leckey, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tatiana Trouvé and Christoph Schlingensief, and their precursors such as Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Stephen Willats, Katharina Sieverding and Paul Thek. A particular role is attributed to installation or environmental works, performance and social policy issues. The overall patrimony of the collection consists of 1,400 works by 700 artists.

Among the artists exhibited on a permanent basis are names such as Georg Baselitz, Bernd und Hilla Becher, Marcel Broodthaers, Stanley Brown, James Lee Byars, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Martin Disler, Donald Judd, Jannis Kounellis, Sol LeWitt, A.R. Penck, Markus Raetz, Gerhard Richter, Robert Ryman and Lawrence Weiner.

The next exhibition, starting from 18 September, is with the work of Korakrit Arunanondchai (* 1986, Bangkok). The exhibition will consist of a commissioned video installation, sculptures and paintings. Korakrit’s work is characterized by dissonance and juxtaposition: different and divergent moments enter the narrative as completely incongruous elements, but which manage to evoke familiar places, spiritual practices, natural environments, fictions and technological developments, superstitions, intertwining historical-political. In this sense, the work created in collaboration with Alex Gvojic and presented at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 is truly significant. It was a projection on three screens where parallel narratives to countered a linear understanding of time.

The exhibition, curated by Heike Munder (director of the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst), arises from the collaboration with the Hamburg Kunstverein. The Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, the Kunstverein in Hamburg (where the author held an exhibition in 2021) and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves in Porto (where he made a solo exhibition in 2020) co-edit a catalog with texts by May Adadol Ingawanij, Chrissie Illes and Diane Severin Nguyen.

Alessandra Tommasi

Info:

Korakrit Arunanondchai
18.09.2021 – 09.01.2022
MIGROS MUSEUM für Gegenwartkunst
Limmatstrasse 270
CH-8005 Zurigo
tel +41 44 277 20 50
info@migrosmuseum.ch
Casella postale 1766
CH-8031 Zurigo