Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist explores the radical early vision, drawings, and paintings of Dame Zaha Hadid in a major archive exhibition at LUMA Arles, co-curated with Arthur Fouray in collaboration with Maja Hoffmann and Vassilis Oikonomopoulos.
Taking its departure from a phrase handwritten by Zaha in 2013—‘There should be no end to experimentation’—this film journeys through her formative years. From her early encounters with Russian Constructivism, Malevich, and El Lissitzky to groundbreaking projects like Malevich’s Tektonik, 59 Eaton Place, and The World (89 Degrees), Obrist reveals how Hadid used abstract painting and calligraphic lines to shatter Euclidean geometry decades before digital software caught up.
Time Period:
20th century
Themes:
Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show 'World Soup (The Kitchen Show)' in 1991 he has curated more than 300 shows.
So far in 2018, Obrist has co-curated at the Serpentine Galleries a solo show for Rose Wylie. In 2014 he curated the Swiss Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, where he presented 'Lucius Burckhardt and Cedric Price --- A stroll through a fun palace'; the building was designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron, and the program was developed with artists Liam Gillick, Philippe Parreno, Tino Sehgal and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Obrist's Art of Handwriting project is taking place on Instagram and is a protest against the disappearance of handwriting in the digital age.
In 2013, Obrist co-founded with Simon Castets the 89plus, a long-term, international, multi-platform research project, conceived as a mapping of the digitally native generation born in or after 1989. In 2011 Obrist received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence, in 2009 he was made Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and in 2015 he received the International Folkwang Prize for his commitment to the arts. Obrist has lectured internationally at academic and art institutions, and is contributing editor to several magazines and journals.
Obrist's recent publications include Mondialité, Conversations in Mexico, Conversations in Colombia, Ways of Curating, The Age of Earthquakes with Douglas Coupland and Shumon Basar, and Lives of The Artists, Lives of The Architects.
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Zaha Hadid: Sketching the Future
Hans Ulrich Obrist traces how Zaha Hadid’s futuristic architecture evolved from ‘superfluid’ sketches.
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Hans Ulrich Obrist traces how Zaha Hadid’s futuristic architecture evolved from ‘superfluid’ sketches.
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Discover the unexpected tale that lies behind ‘the face of abolition’, as painted by William Hoare.
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Damien Hirst visits the studio of Sir Peter Blake, one of the leading figures of British Pop art.