Exhibition "CRAZY, CRUEL AND FULL OF LOVE" - Works from the collection of contemporary art | Kunstmuseum Bern

CRAZY, CRUEL AND FULL OF LOVE
Works from the collection of contemporary art
12.09.2020 – 14.02.2021

‘Social Distancing’, reduced working hours, compulsory mask-wearing, but also a great wave of solidarity and helpfulness: the rollercoaster of sometimes extreme emotions which continue to define reality for many people in times of the pandemic, forms the starting-point for the exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Bern. On a journey through recent art history, the exhibition uses works from the collection of contemporary art to find what artists can tell us about exceptional emotional states.

The terms ‘crazy’, ‘cruel’ and ‘full of love’ – the title of the exhibition is borrowed from a work by Geneva artist Vidya Gastaldon from 2011 – describe a wide variety of contradictory emotions. The exhibition is intended to stimulate visitors into quite deliberately reading selected works of contemporary art as a mirror of emotional worlds released by the ‘new reality’ of the Covid-19 pandemic. Threat to health, illness and fatalities are joined by existential uncertainties: unemployment, reduced working hours and falling income create new economic realities, and ‘social distancing’ has become the by-word of the moment. On the other hand, many people have been able to experience greater solidarity, neighbourly help and – out of necessity, as a result of home office working and home schooling – greater communication within the family.

The exhibition addresses this existential confrontation with new realities and the emotional reactions to them. It considers the works from the collection of contemporary art not only as the expression of a time-specific and individual concept of art, but also as an echo-chamber of social experiences. In art from recent times there are many examples of extreme emotional states, exciting configurations and powerful experiences of crisis. The examples range from the state of being in love and overflow-ing joie de vivre to an intensified confrontation with transience.

With works by
Marina Abramović, Luc Andrié. Christian Boltanski, Michael Buthe, Miriam Cahn, Martin Disler, Vidya Gastaldon, Daiga Grantina, David Hominal, Urs Lüthi, Markus Raetz, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Francis-co Sierra and Hans Stalder.

Vidya Gastaldon. Crazy, cruel and full of love, 2011
Mischtechnik: Acryl und Öl auf Leinwand. 100 x 180.5 cm
Kunstmuseum Bern