CS_Artbook

Art & Entrepreneurship

Art & Entrepreneurship Allora & Calzadilla / Heman Chong / André Pretorius / Tzu Nyen Ho / Michael Bauer / Fabian Marti / Pavel Pepperstein / Plamen Dejanoff / Latifa Echakhch / Nicola Gobbetto / DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY / C ao Fei / Mamiko Otsubo / Ester Partegàs / GONZALEZ & RUSSOM / Thukral & Tagra / ANONYMOUS / Matthew Smith / Miessen & PloughfieldS / Mai-Thu Perret

/a ll i d a z l a C &a r oll A érdnA / gnohC nameH / oH ne y N u z T / s u i r ot e r P n a i abF / r e ua B le cha i M / nie tsre ppe P le vaP / i t r Ma fa i tLa / ff o n aj e D ne m a l P - b o G a loc iN / hch k Echa MIN A ENJ B VIDA D / ot t e b ok i m Ma / i e F o a C /ERRY H S / sà getraP retsE / obustO /RUSSOM & LEZ A GONZ -NONY A / a rg Ta& la rkuTh / h t i m S weht tMa / MOUS /S d l e i hf g u ol P & n e s s e i M t e r re P u Th- i Ma

Art & Entrepreneurship

TABLE OF CONTENTS 6 7

TABLE OF CONTENTs

Introduction Artwork

8 14

Artists

122

About Art

202

Index

222

INTRODUCTION 8 9

Dear Reader, The modernization and industrialization of Switzerland in the late 19th century were the result of Alfred Escher’s visionary ideas, his unwavering determination and his personal commitment. He provided the momentum for the Swiss railroad network, the Gotthard tunnel, which brought northern and southern Europe closer together, and leading universities like the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, which is famous for its innovative thinking. In addition, he laid the foundations that made Switzerland a financial center, with the creation of Credit Suisse and Swiss Life. There is no doubt that we need people like Alfred Escher in politics and in business. Against all obstacles, they champion the developments that move society forward.

What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur like Alfred Escher? What is important to them and drives them to achieve great things? When asked to define the essence of “entrepreneurship,” leading entrepreneurs stated that it is all about

Entrepreneurship has been the driving force behind trade and industry since the dawn of time. It has enabled civilizations to develop, cultures to flourish and spawned countless inventions.

We would not have seen all-important breakthroughs in science, business and culture if the leading lights in those fields had not been fueled by entrepreneurial spirit and the courage to follow their dreams.

Alfred Escher, the founder of Credit Suisse, was one of these leaders.

° having a vision, envisaging “what can be done” beyond preconceived boundaries ° possessing the knowledge to make the vision reality ° having the right network of partners and friends to lend support and assistance ­° having the love and support of family in good times and bad ° and contributing to society – after all, with great power comes great responsibility To lend a new perspective to these values, and additionally to encourage young talent, Credit Suisse has invited a group of young artists – themselves entrepreneurs in a sense – to translate these core values of entrepreneurship into works of art.

These young artists use contemporary art to express how today’s generation sees these entrepreneurial values.

Credit Suisse is proud to present a selection of these exceptional works of art in this book, enriched with views on entrepreneurship from the past and present. We hope that you will enjoy the new perspectives they offer.

With kind regards,

Walter B. Kielholz Chairman OF Credit Suisse Group

Entrepreneurship – past and PRESENT

INTRODUCTION 12 13

KNOWLEDGE Knowledge is power – that was one of the reasons why Alfred Escher founded the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), today the leading university in Switzerland and former home to 21 Nobel Laureates, including Albert Einstein and Wilhelm Röntgen. The ETH currently supports Europe’s most sophisticated nuclear research facility.

“Knowledge is power – I agree. Today especially, however, I think there is another component to it: time. Being the first to have the right information is crucial; knowing what everybody else already knows is of little use. I build on proven facts, expertise and know-how in order to anticipate future possibilities and make sound decisions. But I must admit, sometimes I just put aside the facts and figures and trust my instinct – and often it turns out to be the right decision. This proves that it is not enough to have knowledge, you also need the courage to drive things forward in times of uncertainty.” Owner of a US private equity firm

VISION Alfred Escher was a man of vision. He recognized the immense significance of a highly developed infrastructure for a modern Switzerland. His visionary ideas for the financial sector, the railroad network, and the Gotthard tunnel drove forward the realization of these milestones in Switzerland’s development.

“We hear the word ‘vision’ so frequently nowadays that we often do not fully appreciate its true meaning or the work of those who are genuinely worthy of the title ‘visionary.’ I think it is an inner need to succeed and to ‘make a difference’ in some way that drives these people to focus on and pursue the opportunities that arise with utter dedication and courage in the face of opposition and setbacks. It doesn’t need to be a ‘make the world a better place’ plan – what counts is your belief in your ideas and dreams.” CEO of a Russian company

FAMILY Returning home to his family in Switzerland from Berlin in 1838, Alfred Escher wrote in a letter to one of his relatives: “It was the most joyous moment of my life ... and it became clear to me how strong the bond between myself and my parents is.”

“A healthy, harmonious family is key to my quality of life. My family is the source from which I can recharge my batteries. I guess that the same holds true for everybody, not just for entrepreneurs. My family has to endure my long workdays and frequent business trips abroad, but they know that I work hard for their benefit and they accept it.

However, the weekends are sacred for me and my family – if I don’t have time for my kids, then I can get into a lot of trouble ...” Top executive of a UK-based company

CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIETY NETWORK A seat on the most influential boards and friends in key positions enabled Alfred Escher to overcome obstacles and opposition, and gave him the support to implement his visionary ideas.

“Entrepreneurial activity does not occur in isolation. It is embedded in cultural and social contexts and within webs of human networks, both social and economic. In fact, I would describe an entrepreneur’s personal network as a ‘firm’s most significant resource.’ Personally, I tend to draw first on my ‘circle of trust,’ such as my family or close friends; my business contacts take second place. While I know that I can rely on the first group, for the second group, it is all about giving and receiving.” Owner of a German family business

As the leading entrepreneur and statesman of his time, Alfred Escher advocated social welfare and shared responsibility for the well-being of others. For him, it was important to strike a balance between commercial profit and benefits for the community.

“With great power comes great responsibility. I totally agree. Of course, as an entrepreneur it is in your own interest to maximize your company’s profit – but that doesn’t have to be contrary to your employees’ well-being. I don’t see giving back to society as an empty phrase or something to do because it is fashionable – that is one of the things I dislike most and it is actually very counter-productive. Giving back to society is not only a question of how much you donate to a particular charity organization … it is whether or not you really believe in your contribution and also personally engage yourself in the cause.” Owner of a large trading company now in its tenth generation, based in Asia Pacific

ARTWORK 14 15

ARTWORK ALLORA & CALZADILLA

16

MICHAEL BAUER

20

HEMAN CHONG

26

PLAMEN DEJANOFF

32

LATIFA ECHAKHCH

38

CAO FEI

44

NICOLA GOBBETTO

50

GONZALEZ & RUSSOM

54

FABIAN MARTI

60

TZU NYEN HO

64

MAMIKO OTSUBO

70

ESTER PARTEGÀS

76

PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN

82

MAI-THU PERRET

88

ANDRÉ PRETORIUS

92

DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY

98

MATTHEW SMITH

104

THUKRAL & TAGRA

110

MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS

116

ALLORA & CALZADILLA 18 19

This film follows a group of commercial airlines from countries such as Russia, Argentina, Venezuela, Angola and China, among others, as they travel in and around the streets of Havana, Cuba. As the film progresses, one discovers that these airlines are actually made out of hair and their passage through the city takes place on various residents’ head ... a physical and physiological travel in which arrival and departure is endlessly delayed.

JENNIFER ALLORA & GUILLERMO CALZADILLA Puerto Rico, November 2007 P.124

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ALLORA & CALZADILLA Untitled, 2007 Video Previous page: sketch This page: sketch detail

P.124

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MICHAEL BAUER 20 21

MICHAEL BAUER F/M Scorben, 2007 Charcoal on paper 29.5 x 20 cm Layout by Michael Bauer with paintings from Michael Bauer and found images.

P.130

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MICHAEL BAUER 22 23

MICHAEL BAUER B/M YLMAZ – UHOS, 2007 Charcoal on paper 29.5 x 21 cm P.130

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MICHAEL BAUER 24 25

MICHAEL BAUER Fjorkboy, 2006 Oil on canvas 60 x 50 cm Courtesy of Peter Kilchmann, Zurich P.130

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HEMAN CHONG We Have A Vision For Tomorrow: A brief encounter with government policies in science fiction circa 1968, 2007 Offset print on archival acid-free paper 59.4 x 84 cm Edition of 5 P.134

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HEMAN CHONG Eighty-Eight Knowledge Grids: Exploring the archive as architecture, 2007 Offset print on archival acid-free paper 59.4 x 84 cm Edition of 5 P.134

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HEMAN CHONG Common Sense About Networks: Hostile postapocalyptic worlds and community-building, 2007 Offset print on archival acid-free paper 59.4 x 84 cm Edition of 5 P.134

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HEMAN CHONG New Member In The Family: Ethics and values regarding clones and robots, 2007 Offset print on archival acid-free paper 59.4 x 84 cm Edition of 5 P.134

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HEMAN CHONG 30 31

HEMAN CHONG Social Responsibility In The Year 2050: Investigating the possibilities for sustainable multicultural societies, 2007 Offset print on archival acid-free paper 59.4 x 84 cm Edition of 5 P.134

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PLAMEN DEJANOFF 32 33

PLAMEN DEJANOFF Clown, 2006 Surrogate crystal 70 x 40 x 40 cm Edition of 3 Pedestal made of cora walnut 90 x 60 x 60 cm Opposite page: detail P.138

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PLAMEN DEJANOFF 34 35

PLAMEN DEJANOFF Dog, 2006 Surrogate crystal 70 x 50 x 40 cm Edition of 3 Pedestal made of cora walnut 90 x 60 x 60 cm Opposite page: detail P.138

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PLAMEN DEJANOFF 36 37

PLAMEN DEJANOFF New Works (Pinocchio), 2007 Tempera on paper (after Enrico Mazzanti) 30 x 20 cm Opposite page: detail Conceived as draft for: New Works (Pinocchio), 2008 Bronze 170 x 120 x 120 cm Courtesy of the artist, Michelle Nicol Fine Arts, Zurich and Meyer Kainer, Vienna P.138

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LATIFA ECHAKHCH 40 41

Previous page: LATIFA ECHAKHCH Untitled (Zellig), Ochre, Red, Blue, Black, 2007 Linoleum Variable dimensions, assembled 380 x 380 cm Courtesy of the artist and Hussenot Gallery, Paris This page and opposite: details P.142

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LATIFA ECHAKHCH Fantasia (Empty Flag) Corner 5 x 3, 2007 Metal, wood and plastic 300 x 300 x 300 cm Opposite page: detail P.142

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CAO FEI 44 45

CAO FEI i.Mirror by China Tracy (aka: Cao Fei), 2007 Second Life documentary film, single-channel color video, with sound Duration 28 minutes Film still Courtesy of the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects, New York P.146

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CAO FEI 46 47

CAO FEI i.Mirror by China Tracy (aka: Cao Fei), 2007 Film stills P.146

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CAO FEI 48 49

CAO FEI i.Mirror by China Tracy (aka: Cao Fei), 2007 Film still P.146

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NICOLA GOBBETTO Boys & Girls, 2007 Wood, molded plywood, wheels 20 equivalent triangles 32 x 60 x 60 x 60 cm Courtesy of the artist and Fonti Gallery, Naples P.150

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NICOLA GOBBETTO 52 53

Opposite page and this page: NICOLA GOBBETTO Boys & Girls, 2007 Details P.150

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LOREM IPSUM 54 55

GONZALEZ & RUSSOM 56 57

Previous page: GONZALEZ & RUSSOM The 4th Way, 2007 Laminate, electronic components, mdf 190 x 110 x 110 cm Courtesy of the artists and Fonti Gallery, Naples This page and opposite page: details P.154

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LOREM IPSUM 58 59

GONZALEZ & RUSSOM The 4th Way, 2007 Detail P.154

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LOREM IPSUM 60 61

FABIAN MARTI I Wonder What Life Will Be, 2007 Ink-jet print on paper 173 x 140 cm Edition of 5

FABIAN MARTI A Life That Lasts Eternally, 2007 Ink-jet print on paper 173 x 140 cm Edition of 5

Courtesy of the artist and Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich

Courtesy of the artist and Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich

P.158

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P.158

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FABIAN MARTI 62 63

FABIAN MARTI I Wonder What Life Will Be, 2007 Detail P.158

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FABIAN MARTI A Life That Lasts Eternally, 2007 Detail P.158

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TZU NYEN HO 64 65

TZU NYEN HO Google Image Search_Vision, 2007 Digital print, lightbox 120 x 192 x 16 cm P.162

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TZU NYEN HO 66 67

TZU NYEN HO Google Image Search_Knowledge, 2007 Digital print, lightbox 120 x 192 x 16 cm P.162

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TZU NYEN HO Google Image Search_Social Responsibility, 2007 Digital print, lightbox 120 x 192 x 16 cm P.162

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TZU NYEN HO 68 69

TZU NYEN HO Google Image Search_Network, 2007 Digital print, lightbox 120 x 192 x 16 cm P.162

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TZU NYEN HO Google Image Search_Family, 2007 Digital print, lightbox 120 x 192 x 16 cm P.162

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LOREM IPSUM 70 71

MAMIKO OTSUBO 72 73

MAMIKO OTSUBO Milkyway, 2007 Waxed wood, blackened steel, lacquer, rubber, vinyl, stainless steel 61 x 869 x 53.3 cm Previous page: detail P.166

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MAMIKO OTSUBO Stars, 2007 Brass-plated steel 68.6 x 68.6 x 63.5 cm P.166

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MAMIKO OTSUBO Value Pak, 2007 Stainless steel, plaster, wood, vinyl 245 x 105 x 35 cm Photography by Hans-Georg Gaul P.166

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MAMIKO OTSUBO 74 75

MAMIKO OTSUBO Untitled (medium), 2007 Wood, paint, cobalt blue glass, rubber, nylon, PVC 74.7 x 93 cm Photography by Jean Vong P.166

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ESTER PARTEGÀS 76 77

ESTER PARTEGÀS Experience Life, 2007 Ink-jet ultrachrome archival print 112 x 127 cm Courtesy of the artist and Foxy Production, New York P.170

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ESTER PARTEGÀS 78 79

ESTER PARTEGÀS Millions Can’t Relax, 2007 Ink-jet ultrachrome archival print 112 x 127 cm Courtesy of the artist and Foxy Production, New York P.170

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ESTER PARTEGÀS 80 81

ESTER PARTEGÀS Was It Love, 2007 Ink-jet ultrachrome archival print 112 x 127 cm Courtesy of the artist & Foxy Production, New York P.170

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PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN 82 83

PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN Basis, 2007 Watercolor on paper 66.5 x 102 cm Courtesy of the artist and Elisabeth Kaufmann Gallery, Zurich P.174

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PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN 84 85

PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN Hope, 2007 Watercolor on paper 57 x 76 cm Courtesy of the artist and Elisabeth Kaufmann Gallery, Zurich P.174

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PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN 86 87

PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN Basis, 2007 Detail P.174

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PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN Hope, 2007 Detail P.174

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MAI-THU PERRET 88 89

MAI-THU PERRET No More City, 2006 Serigraphy on paper 91.5 x 61.3 cm Edition of 40 Courtesy of the artist and Francesca Pia Gallery, Zurich P.178

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MAI-THU PERRET Untitled, 2007 Application on fabric 300 x 300 cm Courtesy of the artist and Francesca Pia Gallery, Zurich P.178

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ANDRÉ PRETORIUS 92 93

ANDRÉ PRETORIUS A Bird in the Hand, 2007 Oil, acrylic and glitter on canvas 137 x 183 cm Work in progress, phase 1 P.182

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ANDRÉ PRETORIUS 94 95

ANDRÉ PRETORIUS A Bird in the Hand, 2007 Work in progress, phase 2 P.182

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ANDRÉ PRETORIUS 96 97

ANDRÉ PRETORIUS A Bird in the Hand, 2007 Work in progress, phase 3 P.182

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DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY Walker in the Trees, 2007 New York, NY Traditional color print 24 x 24 cm Edition of 5 P.186

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DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY 100 101

DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY Dante’s Peak, 2007 Death Valley, CA Traditional color print 12 x 31 cm Edition of 5 P.186

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DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY 102 103

DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY Blue Eyes, 2006 New Haven, CT Traditional color print 6 x 16 cm Edition of 5 P.186

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MATTHEW SMITH 104 105

MATTHEW SMITH Untitled, 2007 Mirror, paint 50 cm diameter Opposite page: detail P.190

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MATTHEW SMITH 106 107

MATTHEW SMITH Duvet With Stand No. 7, 2007 Feather duvet with wooden stand 160 x 50 x 50 cm Opposite page: detail P.190

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LOREM IPSUM 108 109

Opposite page: MATTHEW SMITH Untitled, 2007 Metal shelving brackets, enamel paint 140 x 90 cm Above: detail P.190

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THUKRAL & TAGRA Metropolis – 2, 2007 Acrylic, oil on canvas Diptych 183 x 366 cm Pages 112–115: details P.194

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MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS 116 117

MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS As Found, 2008 Exhibition architecture P.198

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MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS 118 119

MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS As Applied, 2008 Exhibition architecture P.198

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MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS 120 121

MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS As Used, 2008 Exhibition architecture P.198

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ARTISTS 122 123

ARTISTS ALLORA & CALZADILLA

124

ANONYMOUS

128

MICHAEL BAUER

130

HEMAN CHONG

134

PLAMEN DEJANOFF

138

LATIFA ECHAKHCH

142

CAO FEI

146

NICOLA GOBBETTO

150

GONZALEZ & RUSSOM

154

FABIAN MARTI

158

TZU NYEN HO

162

MAMIKO OTSUBO

166

ESTER PARTEGÀS

170

PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN

174

MAI-THU PERRET

178

ANDRÉ PRETORIUS

182

DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY

186

MATTHEW SMITH

190

THUKRAL & TAGRA

194

MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS

198

ALLORA & CALZADILLA 124 125

ALLORA & CALZADILLA

Jennifer Allora, born 1974 in Philadelphia, USA, and Guillermo Calzadilla, born 1972, in Havana, Cuba, both live and work in Puerto Rico Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have been working collaboratively since 1995. Their work encompasses the media of sculpture, performance, architecture and social or public intervention, thus reflecting on the complex intersections of global politics and personal identity. Often their activities take place outside the institutional art context pointing to disturbing conditions or issues, and in doing so provoke a public discussion which actually reaches out to a broader public. Most importantly though, their conceptual work, albeit critical, is underlined with poetry and playfulness that make it most enjoyable to experience.

Specially for Art & Entrepreneurship the artists have developed a new film. The piece follows a group of commercial airlines from Russia, Argentina, Venezuela, Angola and China, among others, as they travel in and around the streets of Havana, the capital city of Cuba. As the film progresses one discovers that these airlines are actually made out of hair and their passage through the city takes place on the heads of various residents. The film depicts a physical and physiological journey without departure or destination. In contrast to the political implications of the commercial airlines and the eventful pasts of their home countries, this film is also endearingly and strangely funny as the setting is totally absurd. Another touching contrast is the fact that a highly advanced technical machine, such as a commercial plane, is reconstructed from a unconventional material such as hair.

It is typical for Allora & Calzadilla to not enter into a direct dialogue with the set of entrepreneurial values but to challenge the very idea of entrepreneurial thinking which is linked with the capitalist system. As economists Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstrale have stated: “Capitalism may not be the best system. But it is the best system we know of.”

In 2000 Allora & Calzadilla could be seen in a large international context at the Havana Biennial. This was followed by participation at the Tate Modern, London, the 51st Venice Biennial, the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the Renaissance Society in Chicago and the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 2007.

P.16

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ALLORA & CALZADILLA 126 127

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

Who are your heroes?

What’s your favorite artwork in history?

How would you describe your work?

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

What does the value family mean to you?

2007 Beacon Art Project 2007, Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire; Allora & Calzadilla, Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu; Allora & Calzadilla, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Allora & Calzadilla – Wake Up, Renaissance Society, Chicago; Allora & Calzadilla, Serpentine Gallery, London; Allora & Calzadilla, Kunsthalle Zurich; Allora & Calzadilla, Lisson Gallery, London; Allora & Calzadilla, San Francisco Arts Institute, San Francisco 2006 Clamor, The Moore Space, Miami; Allora & Calzadilla, S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; Combine Platter, Screening event, LA MOCA, Los Angeles; (En)Tropics, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; Land Mark, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Concentrations 50: Allora & Calzadilla, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas 2004 Unstable Atmospheres, Lisson Gallery, London; Ciclonismo, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; Radio Revolt: One Person, One Watt, Artist in Residence Project, Walker; Art Center, Minneapolis 2003 Land Mark, Escuela de Artes Plásticas, San Juan; Puerto Rican Light, Americas Society, New York 2002 Allora & Calzadilla, Institute of Visual Arts (INOVA) at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee 2001 Allora & Calzadilla, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Santurce

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 All About Laughter, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Valencia Biennial, Valencia; Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates; 6th Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre; Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul; Rozamira 07’ Festival, Winzavod Art-center, Moscow 2006 Five Billion Years, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Uncertain States of America, Serpentine Gallery, London; 2006 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; La Force de L’Art, Grand Palais, Paris; Ecotopia: The 2nd ICP Triennial of Photography and Video, International Center for Photography Busan Biennial 2006, Busan Museum of Modern Art, Busan, Korea 2005 Ralentir Vite, Le Plateau/FRAC Ile-de-France, Paris; Irreducible: Contemporary Short Form Video, CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco; 1 Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art: Dialectics of Hope, Moscow; E-Flux Video Rental, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Monuments for the USA, CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco, CA; 51st International Art Exhibition, Venice; Tropical Abstraction, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art 2005, Lyon; Uncertain States of America, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, and Bard College; Beyond Green: Towards a Sustainable Art, David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, Chicago; Second Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou 2004 Triennal Poli/grafica de San Juan, San Juan; Gwangju Biennale 2004: A Grain of Dust, a Drop of Water, Gwangju, South Korea; PARA SITES. When Space Comes Into Play, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien; Dakar Biennial: Le Monde: Dak’Art 2004, Dakar; Ailleurs/Ici, Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris/Arc au Couvent des Cordeliers, Paris 2003 Common Wealth, Tate Modern, London; Away From Home, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; How Latitudes Become Forms, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Fondazione Sandretto Rebaudengo per L’Arte, Turin; Contemporary Arts Center, Houston, TX 2002 Interplay, The Moore Building, Miami, FL; III Bienal Iberoamericana, Lima 2000 VII Bienal de la Habana, Havana

All questions answered by the artists with images found on the world wide web.

ANONYMOUS 128 129

ANONYMOUS The artist wishes to be listed as Anonymous in press releases, publications, announcements and anything public.

The contribution of this artist will be present in the exhibition tour and the auction.

MICHAEL BAUER 130 131

MICHAEL BAUER

Born 1973 in Erkelenz, Central Germany, lives and works in Cologne, Germany Michael Bauer is a member of the young avant-garde painting scene. And yet he cannot be assigned to one particular school or other, instead inventing unique forms of painting that challenge our perceptual faculties and interpretative frames.

Bauer produces his paintings on beige or brown background. And on this neutral backdrop, his strange compositions, as it were, rise or float. Figuration and abstraction merge to form hybrid shapes that have the feel of grotesque children’s dreams. Surrealistic associations, geometric shapes and esoteric-spiritual themes blend into a new whole that triggers a panoply of associations in the viewer. These structures are meant as quasi-personalities, as indicated by an exhibition title dating from 2007: The Pack.

Sometimes a clearly playful element is to be discerned when abstract modernist fragments of images emerge, first painted with great precision, then smeared over by amorphous impasto twistings. Here we sense how history is shed, rebellion and subversion gain the upper hand, or perhaps it is all simply fun.

For the Art & Entrepreneurship exhibition tour Michael Bauer has contributed one of his typical cacophonies of figurative and ornamental elements. The evolving personality on the canvas can be described as vaguely canine, sporting a round brown nose and a black mini bowler hat. Bauer’s paintings are not about the characterization of a certain person, instead the artist is interested in the very idea of representation. As Michael Bauer never indicates any references concerning the portrayed protagonists, and his portraits furthermore can be considered as an attempt to map the imaginative, let us play with the idea that this painting entitled Fjorkboy of 2006 is the portrayal of the entrepreneur type. Which is plausible in a humorous way if you detect the cigar on the right side of the canvas.

Michael Bauer will produce a new painting inspired by the set of entrepreneurial values provided by Credit Suisse.

Bauer’s painting is highly dynamic and each picture has the energy of a rock concert. Which is no coincidence, as the artist is a member of the Cologne noise band Die Bäume. There, painting and music fuse, generating an intangible primordial brew of the new, a microcosm of the unfathomable and monstrous, of pure corporeality and wild fantasy.

Together with Tim Berresheim, in 2002, Michael Bauer opened the Brotherslasher exhibition space in Cologne.

In 2008, he takes part in the show The Triumph of Painting: Germania at the Saatchi Gallery, London.

P.20

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Portrait by Michaela Eichwald

MICHAEL BAUER 132 133

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2008 Hotel Gallery, London 2007 French Meat, Belgian Meat, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich; The Pack, Städtische Galerie, Delmenhorst; Basho’s Friends, Jack Hanley Gallery, Basho’s Bar, Kunstverein Bonn 2006 Oldithek für Assos Gold, maxim, Cologne; The Winnipeg Whore, Hotel, London 2005 Das Kabinett, Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens, Cologne 2004 Die Töne meiner Flöte, Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens, Cologne

What’s your favorite artwork in history?

I don’t have some Top Ten ranking in my head, or whatever. Copley is superb and then there’s the incredible Picabia and Guston was also immensely talented. So how to compile a list? Utterly impossible!

I could in fact probably do better preparing a list of all the truly awful pictures. But that’s not nice. And that helps no one.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2008 Triumph of Painting: Germania, Saatchi Gallery, London 2007 Ballet Mécanique, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, cur. Emma Dexter; Bonjour Monsieur Ensor, Maurus Gmür, Berlin; Radiant City, Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles; Duet, Lehmann Maupin, New York, cur. Sylvia Chivaratanod; Expanded Painting, Prague Biennale 3, Prague, cur. Helena Kontova, Giancarlo Politi; Die anderen Bilder – Outsider und Verwandtes aus der Sammlung Hartmut Neumann, Galerie Münsterland, Emsdetten / Kloster Bentlage, Rheine, Flottmann-Hallen, Herne; Accidental Painting, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York; Gallery Swap, Hotel Gallery, London, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin 2006 Die anderen Bilder – Outsider und Verwandtes aus der Sammlung Hartmut Neumann, Museum der Stadt Ratingen; Faster! Bigger! Better!, ZKM, Karlsruhe, cur. Gregor Jansen, Andreas F. Beitin, Anne Däuper, Yvonne Ziegler; First there is a mountain, Cokkie Snoei Gallery, Rotterdam; Figure – Five Positions, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich; Wir sind hier wegen der Pommes aus Holland oder Kunstwille aus Holland, Möma, Mönchen-Gladbach 2005 Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin 2004 Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles; Screamers, Brotherslasher, Cologne; Whiteboy, Autocenter, Berlin; Ganz oben, Brotherslasher, Cologne 2003 Keiner ist besser oder eventuell besser, Brotherslasher, Cologne 2002 Das Leben ist ein Albtraum..., Galerie Nomadenoase, Hamburg; Brotherslasher with Tim Berresheim and Jonathan Meese, Brotherslasher, Cologne 2001 When we were kings, Kunstverein Heinsberg, Heinsberg; Superschloss, Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg

But today I would say that the best artwork of all time is Untitled by Tommie D. It shows everything, a worm, two moons, a beautiful word, and a dedication, nicely balanced. A good picture! Tomorrow it’ll be gone again. And then return in time for Christmas.

And the best music today is made by Keith Cross & Peter Ross: Pastels. And then tomorrow, once again, Gandalf Can You Travel in the Dark Alone. Or Whitehouse Why You Never Became a Dancer. And this evening there’ll be soup with meatballs.

HEMAN CHONG 134 135

HEMAN CHONG

Born 1977 in Malaysia, lives and works in Singapore and Berlin, Germany Heman Chong is an artist and a curator based in Berlin and Singapore. He received his M.A. in communication art & design from the Royal College of Art, London. His work explores the artistic and cultural output he uncovers in a variety of different media: in science fiction, on the internet, in freely available information and in the world of politics. The raw material he uses includes everyday objects, moments and slip-ups, each of which on its own can constitute an identity. His videos, photographs and installations reflect his unique vision within the whole.

His practice furthermore involves an investigation into the reasons and methods where individuals imagine the future and how it can be represented as a series of conceptually generated objects, situations and texts.

In reaction to the set of entrepreneurial values proposed by Credit Suisse, Heman Chong took a pragmatic, direct and humorous approach. He developed a series of entirely invented posters, advertising scientific lectures, which allegedly took place in 1977 at the Department of Future Fictions, Redhill College of Singapore. Each poster picks up on one given topic and turns it into a pseudo-scientific discussion, reflecting a romantic conception of how people in the seventies imagined life in the future. Social Responsibility is transformed into Investigating the Possibilities for Sustainable Multicultural Societies, whereas Network translates into a lecture entitled Hostile Post-Apocalyptic Worlds and Community-Building. The colorful and graphically pleasing announcements can be conceived as tableaus and depictions of a lost belief in the welfare of the future, bringing together the bygone ideas of faith in progress and belief in improvement over time.

Heman Chong joined seven other artists, curators and writers to collectively write a sci-fi novel based on the writings of Philip K. Dick. The novel is entitled Philip and is published by Project Arts Centre, Dublin. He is inspired by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Samuel Beckett, Stanislaw Lem, Kazuo Ishiguro, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Michel Houellebecq, Thomas More, Haruki Murakami and countless other writers who have written about the future.

In 2003, Heman Chong was responsible for the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennial, Venice. His works can be found on www.hemanchong.com.

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HEMAN CHONG 136 137

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 Common People and Other Stories, Art in General, New York; The Sole Proprietor and Other Stories, Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou 2006 Philip, Project Arts Centre, Dublin 2005 Vexillogy, Cartography and Other Stories, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam 2004 Snore Louder If You Can, The Substation Gallery, Singapore 2003 The Silver Sessions, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; The End of Travelling, Sparwasser HQ, Berlin

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 TransRobota, National Museum of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland; Bare Words, Lautom Contemporary, Oslo 2006 Steiler Konter, Magazin4 Voralberger Kunstverein, Bregenz 2005 City/Observer, New Museum of Contemporary Art/Rhizome.org, New York; Insomnia, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London; Urban Realities: Fokus Istanbul, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Water Event, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo/Migros Museum, Zurich (as part of Yoko Ono’s performance) 2004 Busan Biennale 2004, Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, Busan, South Korea; Depicting Love, Reina Sofia, Madrid/Centro Párraga, Murcia; Twilight Tomorrow, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore 2003 Fiftieth Venice Biennale (Singapore Pavilion), Venice; CP Open Jakarta Biennale, National Art Gallery, Jakarta; 15 Tracks, Tama Art University Museum, Tokyo / Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka; Transmediale.03, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin 2002 Sonic Process, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

How would you describe your work?

It is a situation where people imagine, think about and discuss the future.

What made you become an artist?

Because, because, because.

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

Both are of equal importance.

What’s your ultimate aspiration?

To finish three novels before I die.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

My art dealer.

What does the value network mean to you?

That the sum of all values is only profitable when the networks involved are interested in a conceptual circulation of ideas.

PLAMEN DEJANOFF 138 139

PLAMEN DEJANOFF

Born 1970 in Sofia, Bulgaria, lives and works in Vienna, Austria Contemporary art is a horizontal chaos in which culture and entertainment, artwork and industrial product, art and design mix. Plamen Dejanoff has emerged from this plethora of information as an outstanding representative of the younger generation of concept artists, seeking a new connection between signs and symbols.

Plamen Dejanoff strategically combines game plans of art and business in order to fathom the boundaries of the realm of art and thus has in the past developed a series of long-term projects collaborating with companies, designers and architects. One of these Gesamtkunstwerke runs under the title of Planets of Comparison and involves the restructuring of seven houses in his Bulgarian hometown Veliko Tarnovo, which will later be used by institutions and museums for cultural activities. It is in this context that his interest in bronze was born, as one of the houses will be constructed out of this very material.

For Art & Entrepreneurship Plamen Dejanoff has produced a 1.7-meter-tall Pinocchio sculpture made entirely of the aforementioned bronze. Pinocchio, this well-known character from the homonymous children’s novel, stands for the great lessons in life one must learn on the road to maturity and thus alludes to the entrepreneurial values specified by Credit Suisse such as Social Responsibility, Network and Family. The Pinocchio figure at the same time takes its place in a series of bronze sculptures developed as material studies leading to one of the planned houses in Veliko Tarnovo. In addition to this unique work Plamen Dejanoff has donated two glass sculptures to the Credit Suisse show, representing simplistic versions of a clown and a dog. Their toy-like form again reminds the viewer of figures taken from a fairy tale, a narrative form often chosen to educate children, but also adults, about the true values of life – as, as Dejanoff notes, might preoccupy an entrepreneur in his daily practice. The hyper-perfect realization of all of these typical Plamen Dejanoff pieces accentuates their intended status as objects oscillating between industrial production and auratic artwork.

Due to the production timeline the bronze Pinocchio cannot be reproduced in this catalogue as it is still under construction. Instead Plamen Dejanoff shares with us the vision of his Pinocchio in a drawing.

An overview of Plamen Dejanoff’s oeuvre was exhibited at the MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in 2006. In 2008 Plamen Dejanoff will tour together with Arte Povera icon Michelangelo Pistoletto through a number of European art institutions.

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PLAMEN DEJANOFF 140 141

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 Michelle Nicol Fine Arts, Zurich; Schloss Wendlinghausen, Dörentrup 2006 MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna 2005 Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genoa; Gallery Space for Contemporary Arts, Bratislava 2004 La Salle de Bains, Lyon; Pinksummer, Genoa 2002 Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Galería Javier López, Madrid 2001 Air de Paris, Paris; Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Deutsche Geschichten, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; Images, Spike/Into Positions, Vienna 2006 6. Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; SEE History 2006. Schätze bilden, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel; FASTER! BIGGER! BETTER!, ZKM Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe 2005 Cochabitats, Gallery Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris; Drive, GAM Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna; Criss-Cross-Alphabet, MSU Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb 2004 Stock Zero – Opera, MNAC Museum National de Arta Contemporana, Bucharest; Noch einen Wunsch, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; Trafic d’influences, Tri Postal, Lille 2003 Money for Nothing, Artspace, Auckland; 1. Prague Biennale, Prague 2002 Art & Economy, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Uncommon Denominator, MASS MoCA, North Adams; 1st International Biennial, National Gallery, Tirana 2001 2. Berlin Biennale, KW, Berlin; Encounters, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo; The Constructing of an Image/Germany, Palazzo de la Pappese, Siena

What is your favorite artwork in history?

There are an awful lot of them. Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, dating from 1917. Höhere Wesen befahlen: Rechte obere Ecke schwarz malen!, which Sigmar Polke made in 1969. Or the Shopping Bags sculptures from the early 1990s that Sylvie Fleury made …

How would you describe your work?

In my work I am always searching for something new, for something unusual or something extreme.

I am interested in topics that are not readily acceptable in the art market. And I find it exciting to then address precisely these themes! It makes me happy if people from the art world get agitated by my work, or surprised by it, or simply cannot understand it. For me, that is a sign that I have achieved something with the work.

Who are your most influential role models?

I am completely taken with and enthused about people who have wittily created something completely new. Such as Marcel Duchamp.

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

I find both extremely important. My works must first and foremost have a substantive meaning for myself. Only if the content is right I start working on the realization. During all phases of the work I try to be very precise and above all make no compromises. I have never been interested in half-hearted things.

Do you have an entrepreneurial side?

Yes! The adventure entrepreneur.

What does the value family mean to you?

Love … Responsibility … I grew up in Eastern Europe. My parents and grandparents heaped so much love and care on me that I never noticed that life in the East was gray. For me it was just the contrary!

Now I am myself married and have two children, and I simply love my family above all else!

LATIFA ECHAKHCH 142 143

LATIFA ECHAKHCH

Born 1974 in El Khnansa, Morocco, lives and works in Martigny, Switzerland, and Paris, France Latifa Echakhch grew up as the child of Moroccan immigrants in Paris. In her art, she above all uses sculptures and installations, often relying on everyday materials such as carpets or clothes or food, for example sugar or couscous.

The history and symbolism of these initial materials form an important element in Echakhch’s oeuvre.

Starting from themes from her immediate surroundings, her artistic practice focuses on issues such as home, origin and identity. This political and cultural thrust is fueled by her own biography. Globalization, postcolonialism and immigration are things Echakhch came to know not as theoretical structures, but as the early facts of her lived reality. This sociocritical approach also involves a feminist component. In an early photographic piece, Echakhch alluded to the role plays of US artist Cindy Sherman when she documented herself wearing traditional Moroccan men’s garb. Gender issues remain a central part of Latifa Echakhch’s oeuvre. She exposes their historical roots, especially if we think of the Orientalist fashion of the 19th century, where the woman in the harem was construed as the epitome of exotic sexuality.

The piece Untitled (Zellig) Ochre, Red, Blue, Black is a flat floor sculpture made of cut-out linoleum parts tracing traditional patterns of Moroccan floor tiling. The work was developed specially for the Art & Entrepreneurship project.

Its Moroccan idiom stands for Echakhch’s heritage country, a place where the values of Family, Social Responsibility and Network are held extremely high. The single elements of the piece are meant to be scattered on the floor and can be stepped on by the visitors to the exhibition. Even in this allotted state the Oriental decorative pattern spreads a festive mood.

Echakhch combines this piece with Fantasia (Empty Flag) Corner 5 x 3, a work also developed in 2007, constructed of flagpoles, without the actual flags. The naked arms reach into the space with no duty, and thus question their very purpose. It can be seen as a subtle hint that the usual task of a flag is to communicate Visions and Knowledge.

It is typical for Latifa Echakhch’s young oeuvre that both pieces play with the strong visual codes of her homeland, yet she breaks their iconographic status quo in a quest to define a new truth.

In 2007, Echakhch took part in the group exhibition on Global Feminism curated by Linda Nochlin in the Brooklyn Museum in New York. She also had a show at Le Magasin in Grenoble and participated in the First Thessaloniki Biennial.

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LATIFA ECHAKHCH 144 145

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2009 Galerie Hussenot, Paris 2008 Norrlandsoperan, Umea, Sweden 2007 Il m’a fallu tant de chemins pour parvenir jusqu’à toi, Le Magasin, Grenoble; Fifty fifty, Fantasia, Karma International, Zurich; Dérives, Interface, Dijon 2006 promesse, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Valence 2005 Désert, Show Room, Paris 2004 Call Box, La Box, Bourges 2002 Words don’t come easy to me, Espace Premier Regard, Paris

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2008 Flow, Studio Museum Harlem, New York; Too Early For Vacation, cur. Hou Hanru, EV+A 08, Limerick 2007 Points de vue, cur. Alina Serban, Institut culturel Roumain, Paris; Revolution!, cur. Ulrike Kremeier and Livia Paldi, La Passerelle, Brest, trav. to Mucsarnok – Kunsthalle, Budapest; Urbanologica, cur. Solvita Krese, Latvian Center for Contemporary Art, Riga, Lativa; Society must be defended, cur. Jan-Erik Lundstrom, Heterotopia, 1st Biennale of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki; Global Feminisms, cur. Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, Brooklyn Museum, New York; trav. to Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley; We can’t be stopped, cur. Julie Pellegrin, Nuke galerie, Paris; Wherever we go, cur. Hou Hanru and Gabi Scardi, San Francisco Insitute of Art, San Francisco; Open studio, cur. Elin Strand and Magnus af Petersen, IASPIS, Stockholm 2006 Géographie d’une occupation, cur. Johantan Loppin and Sophie Dubosc, La suite, Château Thierry; Wherever we go, cur. Hou Hanru and Gabi Scardi, Spazio Oberdan, Milan; Revolution!, cur. Ulrike Kremeier and Livia Paldi, Haus Hungarn, Berlin; La fabrique, An extended field of action, cur. Florence Derieux, AK28, Stockholm; La force de l’art, Laboratoire pour un avenir incertain, cur.

Hou Hanru, Grand Palais, Paris; Strategies of Learning, Periferic 7 – Biennial, cur. Florence Derieux, Iasi, Romania; ça s’ouvre? ça s’ouvre pas?, cur. Jean-Pierre Rhem and Thierry Ollat, Ateliers de la ville de Marseille; Langues Entremélées, cur. Zoë Gray and Julia Höner, Espace Culturel François Mitterrand, Périgueux 2005 Go Inside, Tirana Biennale, cur. Hou Hanru, National Gallery of Art, Tirana, Albania; Looking at America, Hohenlohe & Kalb Galerie, Vienna; Time Line, Béton Salon, Paris; Escape Espace, cur. Isabelle de Visscher-Lemaitre and Etienne Vanden Berg, Speelhoven, Aarshot, Belgium; Just what is that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, cur. Thierry Ollat, Les Subsistances, Lyon

What’s your favorite artwork in history?

Christopher D’Arcangelo’s piece for an exhibition curated by Janelle Reiring in Artist Space in September 1978, together with Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler and Adrian Piper. His work entailed eliminating his name from any written information that left the gallery: invitation card and announcement, and all he exhibited was a print of his statement text. If I have to remember only one work in our heritage of art history, then it would be that one and nothing else.

Who are your role models?

I have none, or perhaps too many.

How would you describe your work?

By showing it! My job as an artist is to produce works, to describe them is not part of my activity. But we can talk in front of them, you are welcome.

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

Both are important, of course. But the memory of the work that lingers with you is the most interesting part.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

When I walk through the ruins of our everyday world, I can see hope everywhere.

What does the value family mean to you?

When I think about family, I think about heritage. My own heritage has something to do with the idea of silence: On the one hand, it’s worth nothing and, on the other hand, it’s priceless.

CAO FEI 146 147

CAO FEI

Born 1978 in Guangzhou, China, lives and works in Beijing, China Cao Fei is a video artist, theater director, photographer, writer and blogger and one of the best-known figures in young Chinese art. Her name stands for the staging of virtual worlds, for the ingenious mixture of realities, and for the use of modern communications media with a sure feel for style. In her video, COS Players, dating from 2004, a group of teenagers play a game of identity change, assuming their favorite animated TV character as a vehicle for escapism and self-indulgence. Dressed up as their fantasy figures, they get involved in frantic choreographed battles, culminating in a staged mass death only to later retire to their typically small Chinese home. The rigorously played plots create the idea that identity is constructed by force of will and intention and is not a cultural given.

In an early photo series, Fei staged models with painted-on dog faces and clothing from the luxury brand Burberry’s walking on all fours in front of a feeding bowl or sweetly carrying a handbag in their mouths. The way she works alludes to parallel worlds that have become normality not only in everyday Chinese life: between media globalization and cozy family life, between high-tech and poverty, a belief in progress and the preservation of tradition.

The video piece Cao Fei chose for Art & Entrepreneurship is entitled i.Mirror by China Tracy and went on show at the Venice and Istanbul biennials in 2007. The work is a documentary style narration, which takes place in the virtual online world of Second Life (SL), where the artist in real life (rl) leads an existence as bespoke China Tracy.

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world with its own economic, radical consumerist system, which is entirely designed, built and owned by its residents. The video covers the topics of sex and money, of environmental pollution, of the eternally young and beautiful avatars, but is also about loneliness and the longing to meet someone special who shares your beliefs, your feelings and your life. This work spotlights a new aspect of the entrepreneurial existence: the notion of the human being, the individual behind it all.

Cao Fei’s digital world is a paradise of modernity, nevertheless her artistic approach proves that even in her modern version the romantic search, which is as old as mankind, remains unresolved. In the same line of interpretation certain values, as worshipped by the entrepreneur, remain untouched over time.

In an actual contradiction to the irreversibility of the human pursuit Cao Fei’s video closes with the words: “To go virtual is the only way to forget about the real darkness.” For an overview of Cao Fei’s extensive activities go to www.caofei.com.

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CAO FEI 148 149

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 Cao Fei: Whose Utopia?, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach 2006 PRD Anti-Heroes, Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands; Hip Hop, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York; SIEMENS Art Project 2006: What Are You Doing Here?, Fu Shan OSRAM factory, Guangzhou; COSPlayers, Para Site Art Space, Hong Kong 2005 COSPlayers, Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York; COSPlayers, Courtyard Gallery, Beijing 2004 The San Yuan Li Project, Courtyard Gallery, Beijing

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Tenth International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul; 52nd International Venice Biennial, Venice; China Power Station: Part II, Astrup Fearley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Everyday Miracles, 52nd Venice Biennial; Chinese Pavilion, Venice; Lyon Biennial, Lyon; The Real Thing, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool 2006 China Power Station: Part 1, Battersea Power Station, Serpentine Gallery, London; Singapore Biennial, Singapore; People, Land, State, The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon; Guangzhou: Cantonese Artists in the Sigg Collection, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern; Busan Biennial, Busan, Korea; 2006 Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei; Guangzhou, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern; The Thirteen: Chinese Video Now, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; 15th Sydney Biennial, Sydney; Beijing Case: Culture of the High Speed Urbanism, The Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe 2005 Mahjong, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Exchange Value of Pleasure, Busan Museum of Modern Art, Busan, Korea; Sweet Taboos, 3rd Tirana Biennial, Tirana, Albania; We Are the World, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Riena Sofia, Madrid; I Still Believe in Miracles, Part II, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris; Out of Sight, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam; Get It Louder, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen; Parallel Realities: Asian Art Now, The 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial, Fukuoka; Follow Me!: Contemporary Chinese Art at the Threshold of the Millennium, Mori Museum, Tokyo; Emergency Biennial in Chechnya: A Suitcase from Paris to Grosny, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Millennium, Mori Museum, Tokyo; 1st Montpellier Biennial, Montpellier, France; The 2nd Guangzhou Triennial: BEYOND an Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou; Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Dialectics of Hope, 1 Moscow Biennial, Moscow; 5th Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai Museum of Art, Shanghai; China Moon, Watermill Center, Watermill, New York; China Now, Gramercy Theater, Museum of Modern Art, New York 2003 Alors la Chine?, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Z.O.U. (Zone of Urgency), 50th Venice Biennial, Venice 2002 Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art – The 1st Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou; Media City Seoul The 2nd – Seoul International Media Art Biennial, Seoul 2001 Living in Time: 29 Contemporary Artists from China, Hamburger Bahnhof Contemporary Art Museum, Berlin; The 2nd Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Virtual Future, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou

How would you describe your work?

I am not a Vitruvian man, enclosed within a single perfect circle, looking out at the world from the coordinates of my personal perspective and, simultaneously, providing the measure of all things.

What made you become an artist?

My family, my life and my love.

What’s your ultimate aspiration?

To find new possibilities of combinations in our life.

What does the value network mean to you?

We construct, and we’re constructed, in a mutually recursive process that continually engages our fluid, permeable boundaries and our endlessly ramifying networks.

NICOLA GOBBETTO 150 151

NICOLA GOBBETTO

Born 1980 in Milan, Italy, lives and works in Milan, Italy Nicola Gobbetto is interested in the language of form and the possible shapes form can take, in forms that are formless, and in their complete dissolution. He takes as his starting point themes from art history, popular history and the children’s world – as regards the latter, in particular interpretations of fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney. He then abstracts or alienates these forms to the point where they become irritating and disturbing.

The sculpture named Boys & Girls that Gobbetto has devised for Art & Entrepreneurship is made up of a series of pink and bright-blue triangular shapes, each mounted on three legs with industrial castors attached to them, enabling the piece as a whole to mutate and transform easily in space. The colors refer to the social convention of gender color coding for infants and contrast sharply with the almost ridiculous form (minitables on wheels), while at the same time the triangle echoes the geometrical shapes of constructivist abstraction.

The explicit wonder and fascination for the workings of society is something that occurs in many of Gobbetto’s works. Here the triangular minitables can be understood as representing individuals or clusters as part of a whole, thus literally describing the various entrepreneurial values that stood as a starting point: Network (the tables are always connected to one another), Social Responsibility (what happens when a table is left out), Family (they obviously belong together if only through aesthetic resemblance), Knowledge (their alignment can evoke a chemical formula), Vision (there is the idea of the new and unknown that lingers with the piece and is always connected to the notion of art).

The Italian’s style stands out for its ostensible naivete and innocence while always containing autoreflective and satirical traits in its acutely penetrative presentation into social conventions. It is this ability that makes Gobbetto such a lovable rascal among the new generation of artists. With his free appropriation of myths from the Pop canon, Gobbetto’s practice is reminiscent of Jeff Koons. However, his deliberate ruptures place the Italian clearly in a critical tradition that goes back to the Conceptual Art of the 1960s and 1970s.

Nicola Gobbetto’s works went on show in 2007, among others, at Centre PasquArt in Biel, in Rome’s Palazzo Fendi and in the Museo Pecci in Prato. In 2007 he was also nominated for the renowned Furla Prize.

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NICOLA GOBBETTO 152 153

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2006 SHAPELESS SHAPE, Fonti Gallery, Naples 2004 ICE DREAM, neonprojectbox, Milan

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 What Remains, Lambretto, Milan; Bella Vita, New Barbershop Gallery, Los Angeles; Unexpected Romance, Novara; Progettoggetto, prove di materializzazione, Spazio A, Pistoia; All My Love For You, Pecci Museum, Prato; Out_of_art, from Ernesto Esposito’s collection, Centre PasquArt, Biel; Forwar Fendi, Fendi Palace, Rome; Mumble …

Mumble …, Raffaella Cortese Gallery, Milan 2006 Video Report Italia 04_05, La Comunale Gallery, Monfalcone; People, MADRE Museum, Naples; New Liberalistic Pleasures, Biagiotti Gallery, Florence; The Exhibition Set ReCurated, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam; Cortocircuito: coincidenze ed incontri segnici, Ex Palazzo Enel Novara 2005 Thin Line: The Exhibition, the Movie!!, De Ijskelders & Nadine art centre, Brussels; Report, Villa delle Rose, Bologna; Our Nature, Villa Serena, Bologna; Longtime, Galleria Trafò, House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest; Thin Line, Viafarini Gallery, Milan 2004 neonprojectbox>extended, Bologna; Pilot, Limehouse, Town Hall, London; !Moving!, Cassero Senese della Fortezza Medicea di Grosseto

Which is your favorite artwork in history?

I’m obsessed with the painting Puberty by Edward Munch from 1894. In the painting, you can easily discern several elements of my research: virginity symbolized by the made white bed, the black shapeless shadow which symbolizes the unknown future, the girl between childhood and maturity …

What is your inspiration?

The nature, seasons, color theory, initiating rituals, Disney movies, geometry, Ettore Sottsass’ furniture, macaroons from French patisserie Laduré, a book by David Bachelor titled Cromophobia and one by Stefano Priarone titled Nerd Power, the apparent decline of Britney Spears, movies by Todd Solondz, 1980s videogames, 17th- and 18thcentury engravings, MTV’s Jackass and The Fuccons … I can tell you everything … so much that I lose control of the situation!

Why did you become an artist?

It was inscribed in my DNA. How does art contribute to society?

Art can focus attention on those details that sometimes are unseen, invisible. Some artists have the gift of a different view of the things, of the world, passionate and sceptical, disenchanted, cynical at the same time.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

It’s all about contacts. I live in Milan in the north of Italy and the gallery I work with is based in Naples in the south.

My gallery and I have shared contacts (of course …), but also different ones (sure!) … I maintain contacts with curators and critics who live in my city, and the gallery keeps in contact with those who live in Rome or in the south of Italy or even outside Italy, too … I also like to keep in contact with people who do not necessarily work in the art environment … Fashion, interior design or music magazines can be interesting windows to promote my work …

What does the value knowledge mean to you?

Knowledge is such an abstract term that it scares me a bit … there are people who know everything about UFOs and people who know the exact day and time of the Apocalypse … Speaking of knowledge in your own field, I think that the very important – probably the most important – thing is to travel and see as much as possible … the more you see, the more you grow. Knowledge in the world of art is a pleasure but also an obligation. You need to demonstrate permanently that you’re informed about what’s going on … someone can tell you: Oh, this was already done by another artist … and you should have known! Coincidences have always existed … but if you consider them in your artistic practice, then something totally new can evolve … knowledge can make a difference.

GONZALEZ & RUSSOM 154 155

GONZALEZ & RUSSOM

Delia Gonzalez, born 1972 in Miami, USA, Gavin Russom, born 1974 in Providence, USA, they both currently live and work in New York, USA, and Berlin, Germany Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom have been working collaboratively in a variety of media for the past seven years.

The US duo has made a name for itself both in the electronic music and in the contemporary art scene, although today it is hard to draw a clear distinction between the two domains. They often make use of sound as the central element in their installations. Here, music has a spiritual function that is intended to enable the audience to immerse themselves completely in the atmosphere created by the artists.

For Art & Entrepreneurship Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom have produced a modular sound sculpture which is a contemporary labyrinth. The installation combines electronic sound produced by hand-built synthesizers with reduced modular sculptural forms. The labyrinth is historically a place of initiation and transformation. Its architecture leads one through a circuitous path, confusion and disorientation rising until the center is reached, a metaphor for the spiritual journey inward. Then one undertakes another disorienting journey out, a metaphor for the return to society as a completed and whole individual.

According to the artists the set of entrepreneurial values that serve as the framework for the exhibition can be read as an analog for this evolution of passing through the labyrinth as they describe the process by which individuals engages themselves and then society, beginning with inner Vision and eventually – fuelled by Knowledge – moving outward toward Social Responsibility. The sculpture is entitled The 4th Way after an approach to self-development

by Armenian-Greek mystic Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff. His exercises worked simultaneously on body, mind and the emotions in order to promote a totally balanced inner self. Following the argumentation of the artists, to cherish the entrepreneurial values ultimately leads to finding your place in the universe.

The interlinkage of stringent conceptual forms and a mythical experience of space is one of the unique properties of works by Gonzalez & Russom. They draw their inspiration from seemingly disparate sources, such as Greek mythology, fascist architecture, Latin American mythology, horror films of the 1970s and disco culture, focusing in particular on the historical elements of extreme decadence.

In 2006, the duo exhibited in the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland, and in 2005 in the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, New York, USA. They also held performances at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France, and at the Hamburger Kunstverein in Germany.

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 I Feel Love, Fonti Gallery, Art Statement, Basel 2006 For I Was Like One dead …, Jousse Entreprise, Paris; Ceremonies of Consummation, Peres Projects, Los Angeles 2005 I Feel Love, Fonti Gallery, Naples 2004 Evolution Is Extinct, Daniel Reich, New York 2002 Dream Machine, Daniel Reich, New York

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Out of Art, Centre PasquArt, Biel; Wrong Number, Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco; Cosmic Dreams, Centro Cultural Andratx-Kunsthalle, Majorca 2006 Faces, Bodies, and Contemporary Signs of Ernesto Esposito’s Collection, Contemporary Art Donnaregina Museum, Naples; Music is a Better Noise, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; While Interwoven Echoes Drip into A …, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich 2005 My Way, The Road Less Traveled, Jousse Entreprise, Paris; In Practice, Projects 2005, The Sculpture Center, Long Island City, Queens; The S-Files, Museo Del Barrio, New York; No Ordinary Sanctity, in conjunction with Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Kunstraum Deutsche Bank, Salzburg 2004 Tapestry from an Asteroid, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; Is One Thing Better Than Another Thing?, Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Cologne; Cakewalk, Ambrosino Gallery, Miami; Open Space 2, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise at Passerby, New York; Domestic Porn, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw 2003 My People Were Fair, Team Gallery, New York; The Birdman Returns, Daniel Reich, D’Amelio Terras, New York; Karaoke Death Machine, Daniel Reich, New York 2002 The Bathroom Show, Daniel Reich, New York; Come On, Peacock Hill, Fleischman’s, New York; Ecstatic, Elemental, Electroacoustic, Daniel Reich, New York 2001 Circus! Circus!, Barbacka Konsthall, Sweden 2000 Too Wide Enough, Swiss Institute, New York

Who are the role models that have influenced your work?

British poet and artist William Blake. British-born surrealist painter Leonora Carrington who later lived in Mexico.

Czech New Wave filmmaker Vera Chytilova.

How would you describe your work?

A theatrical externalization of the archetypal world.

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

A combination of both; however, as with any goal in life we always attach the most importance to the destination of the product. Unfortunately once we’ve reached it we never seem to be able to spend enough time with it either.

What’s your ultimate aspiration?

To design a temple with a built-in synthesizer.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

Making the work and producing it.

What does the value network mean to you?

The value network is a string of ideals that grow and change as we experience life. Whether one is active or inactive (in the network) one is still involved in the process of participating in it. How we perceive ourselves within the network is a reflection of our responsibility to the community or society in which we live.

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FABIAN MARTI

Born 1979 in Fribourg, Switzerland, lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland, and Los Angeles, USA Fabian Marti’s photographs and sculptures reflect his fascination with primitive cultures and the worlds of symbols they create, and with subcultures, circles and music scenes. His large, dark images are infused with enigmatic symbolism, something pointed up by the use of symbolically charged objects, their arrangement and striking repetition.

As a response to the values of entrepreneurship set by Credit Suisse, Fabian Marti developed two images, both playing on the Family topic. They each show a bright palm of the hand on a black ground, with the lines, furrows and folds of the hand black, evoking a strangely occult mood. In order to achieve this effect, Marti dyed his palms with a stamp pad, impressed them on white paper, scanned in the impression, and then inverted the image. What was white is now black and vice versa. On another note, to imprint one’s hands might be the first cultural act ever carried out.

Family is expressed in a multitude of ways, all of them recurrent topics in the young work of Fabian Marti. For one there is the idea of genealogy and the question of heritage and timeline (see his latest work APE, MOM, I including a set of ape skulls made of clay). Another approach to the work is the depiction of the father figure as in having a biological father, but also inspirational father figures. You can either kill them, or build on their history – which is a decision with no point of return and leads to the ultimate question typical for Marti: Is it possible to still produce avant-garde work? Most fittingly the two pieces for Credit Suisse are entitled I wonder what life will be and A life that lasts eternally.

The method that Marti has used to produce this work can be described as photogrammatic scanning and has been perfected, if not actually invented, by the artist. The scanner is used instead of a camera, with the objects to be depicted placed directly on the scanner glass. By leaving the scanner’s lid open, the incipient light both creates a dark depth and lends the objects a surprisingly three-dimensional feel.

Marti’s nascent symbolism succeeds in creating a strange and unique life world that is to be located somewhere between horror movies and the fantastic realm of romance novels. His images circle mystically – often the different elements combined are not clear – and function as tempting suggestions as to how we could flee everyday life.

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Photography by Georg Gatsas

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2008 Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich; Alexandre Pollazzon Ltd, London 2007 Sono Legione, Fonti Gallery, Naples; Ius Primae Noctis, CoalmineFotogalerie, Volkartstiftung, Winterthur; Totentanz, Salon Vert, Prague; Ape, Mom, I, Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich 2005 Fabian Marti vs Martin Biafa, White Space, Zurich; Bois de Boulogne, Marks Blond, Bern

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2008 Centre Culturel Suisse, with Valentin Carron and David Hominal 2007 Fri-Art, Fribourg; Ab Ovo, Marks Blond, with Manuel Burgener, Bern 2006 Is That All? for Georges Abstraction Surface Air, Monthly Video Program; Heimlich/Unheimlich, Stadtmuseum, Munich; Six Feet Under, Kunstmuseum Bern; Contragolpe – Reenacting a Failed Operation, Instituto Divorciados; Fabian Marti presents Martin Biafa, with Valentin Carron, Swiss Institute, New York; Hail, Galerie Hinterconti, Hamburg 2005 Our House in the Middle of the Street, Fri-Art, Fribourg 2003 Auf nach New York, Stadtgalerie, Bern 2000 Denken, Drücken, Sprechen, Kunstraum, Munich; Josef Bernhard on Joseph Beuys, Lothringer 13, Munich

How would you describe your work?

The only purpose of my work is to prove that I am an artist.

What made you become an artist?

It was a decision I took.

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

The will.

What’s your ultimate aspiration?

That is still a secret.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

I spend more than I have.

What does the value network mean to you?

I have such a big heart.

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TZU NYEN HO

Born 1976 in Singapore, lives and works in Singapore Tzu Nyen Ho is an artist, filmmaker and author. He came to fame initially in the realm of video art with projects such as the Bohemian Rhapsody Project, in which he adopted the iconic Queen song from 1974 as a kind of ready-made framework for his own artwork. The uncanny work was first screened at the Singapore Biennial in 2006.

The film is set in the Supreme Court of Singapore and takes its spoken dialogue entirely from the lyrics of the song. At one point, quite tongue in cheek, the melody comes from a ringtone on a mobile phone belonging to the mother of the defendant. The video thus addresses the issues of petition and sentence, and like most of Ho’s works is closely bound up with the history of his home country. He critically explores the social and cultural structure of Singapore, which is significantly shaped by its polyethnic population, a long history of foreign rule and the strong influences of Western pop culture.

For the Credit Suisse project, Ho undertook a Google image search on the five values set, namely Vision, Knowledge, Network, Family and Social Responsibility. The search findings cover a range of art-historical paintings via images from advertising through to scientific charts and amateur photos. Ho then compiled the flood of images into five collage-like pieces. In this way, he demonstrates the importance of the Google platform as the reflection of current knowledge, as a contemporary method of accessing knowledge quickly and as a democratic thought machine.

Tzu Nyen Ho also writes on film and the visual arts, and is Singapore desk editor for the magazine Art Asia Pacific (US).

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 Here 2006 Sejarah Singapore 2005 4 x 4 – Episodes of Singapore Art 2003 Utama – Every Name in History Is I, The Substation, Singapore

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Soft Power, Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art; The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, Gallery 3,14, Bergen, Oslo; Lucky 7 Asia – Europe Mediations, National Gallery of Poznan; Thermocline of Art, ZKM, Karlsruhe; The Bohemian Rhapsody Project and 4 x 4 – Episodes of Singapore Art, Contemporary Art Center of South Australia; Video Killed the Painting Star, Contemporary Center of Art, Glasgow; The Theatre of Life, Trent 2006 The Glowing Whistle Festival, HQ Sparwasser, Berlin; Underplayed: A Mix-Tape of Music-Based Videos, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; 1st Singapore Biennial, Singapore; Move on Asia, Tokyo Wonder Site; Islanded, Institute of Contemporary Art, Singapore; Move on Asia, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art 2005 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial; No Time for Space, Para-Site, Hong Kong; Singapore Seasons, Institute of Contemporary Art, London 2004 SENI, Singapore Art Museum, Image Smugglers, 26th São Paolo Biennial, São Paolo; Paintings, Display, The Podium, Makati City, Philippines; The Venice Architectural Biennial, Singapore Pavilion, Venice; Paintings, Painting as Process – Re-evaluating Painting, The Earl Lu Gallery, Singapore; Loop in Motion, Video Festival, Seoul

What’s your favorite artwork in history?

John Coltrane’s version of My Favorite Things.

Who are your heroes?

We don’t need another hero, we don’t need to know the way home. All we want is life beyond the Thunderdome.

What is more important in your work, the process or the product?

In the long view of things, I think that both process and product are intermingled in ways that cannot be unraveled.

Or, perhaps, it might be more precise to say that a finished artwork is also always in process – it triggers reactions, interpretations, sensations, while slowly disintegrating.

Does art have the potential to change the world?

It seems to me that the world is always already changing – with or without the practice of what we call art. I guess another way to say this is that any action has the potential to change the world – after all, even the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can perhaps trigger a tornado in Texas … so surely the world is constantly transformed by the substantial resources and energies expended in the production of art.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

To stay alive and happy, in my current form, requires all my entrepreneurial powers.

What does the value vision mean to you?

To be able to see – not only what lies beyond (in the sense of being a visionary), but also, just as importantly, to see what lies around us (in the sense of recognizing).

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MAMIKO OTSUBO

Born in 1974 in Nishinomiya City, Japan, lives and works in Brooklyn, USA Mamiko Otsubo’s objects and drawings deal with the subject of landscape: Sun, clouds, water and mountains are the kind of leitmotifs that appear in her work, fractured into abstraction. Her polished surfaces with their carefully coordinated color and material combinations aim at a direct and sublime perception of traditional pictorial themes.

And although in their perfect aesthetics they do reference mass-produced goods, they are created by the artist herself using highly intricate procedures.

Otsubo, who was born in Japan, grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, combines the visual elements of the different cultures that have influenced her with playful perfection and a touch of humor. She radically reduces the shapes she has borrowed from nature and interweaves them with elements taken from architecture and design. In this, she has particular recourse to the formal vocabulary of 20th-century modernist furniture design which, in turn, takes its inspiration from the fine arts. Accordingly, Otsubo uses a closed system of reference drawn from art, architecture and design.

The family of work produced by Otsubo for Art & Entrepreneurship demonstrates the whole breadth of her artistic oeuvre. For example, her star-shaped sculpture Stars references the 1960s design classic called The Butterfly Chair, as well as a romantic idea of nocturnal bliss. In her work Milky Way she leads viewers astray, tongue in cheek, as they see themselves confronted with a misappropriated bench. The fragility of the material combined with the phosphorescent rubber balls transform this item of pseudo-furniture into a sublime object without a clear visible use.

Rather than applying the set of entrepreneurial values to her work as a subject matter, Mamiko Otsubo states that “it was more appropriate for me to think of them [the values] as essential elements in a tool kit for me as an artist.”

According to the artist the big difference between art-making and entrepreneurship could be that art requires Vision as well as a kind of blindness, and Knowledge as well as a complete disregard for it, as accidents often yield the most enlightening solutions. Then again thought-provoking innovation does not follow given paths – which is equally true for the artist and the entrepreneur.

Mamiko Otsubo’s work is located in an area of conflict in terms of cultural theory, comprising as it does nature, design and art, and continues the modernist debate initiated by heroes such as Constantin Brancusi and Isamu Noguchi. Another reference in Otsubo’s minimalist über-aesthetics is US pop artist Alex Katz. Otsubo came to public attention in New York in 2005 through a project in the public sphere for the famous Public Art Funds and her participation in exhibitions at the Sculpture Center in 2007 in Long Island City.

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MAMIKO OTSUBO 168 169

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 cuts, Spielhaus Morrison, Berlin 2006 rub, Galerie Mark Muller, Zurich

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2008 Dark Fair, Swiss Institute, New York 2007 Art Supernova, Art Basel Miami Beach; Punto Gris, San Juan; Aquarium Show, Frieze Art Fair, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; Camilla Low, Mamiko Otsubo, and Stefan Thater, Daniel Reich Gallery at Hotel Chelsea, New York; The Happiness of Objects, Sculpture Center, Long Island City; You Come Home (the house is empty but the lights are on), Galerie Mark Muller, Zurich 2006 EAF 06: 2006 Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City; Salad Days, Artist Space, New York 2005 I Woke Up in a Strange Place, Moti Hasson Gallery, New York; Material World, Project commissioned by the Public Art Fund, Metro Tech Center, Brooklyn 2004 Protuberance(s), Buia Gallery, New York

What is your favorite artwork in history?

Alex Katz’s night paintings and On Kawara’s date paintings. I really admire the razor-sharp precision and economy with which Katz creates a high-style image you will never forget. In the case of On Kawara’s date paintings, I’m really attracted to the conceptual framework of that body of work, which is at once both rigid and completely free.

I also really love how brutal both of their strategies are.

What is your inspiration?

It is actually very difficult for me to quantify that. The word inspiration implies a kind of passivity that I don’t identify with. I do believe that there is something I can learn from everyone and everything. I am determined to absorb whatever that is, but it’s an active process. I’m most attracted to seeing an efficient and innovative solution to a problem in concrete form, be it in art or in something else seemingly unrelated to art. I am not interested in stories.

What made you become an artist?

I truly spent years trying my hand at more stable professions, but ultimately this was the only thing I was really interested in spending my time doing. I am basically too stubborn to work with others on a full-time basis.

In which ways can art contribute to society?

Art can inspire people to change the world.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

Being an artist is not so unlike being an entrepreneur or maybe your own homegrown cottage industry. The logic and strategies employed are particular to our respective industries and hence yield different outcomes, but the costs and efforts involved in maintaining the operation are the same.

What does the value knowledge mean to you? … I think knowledge is important. Everyone needs it and should get some.

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ESTER PARTEGÀS

Born 1972 in Barcelona, Spain, lives and works in Brooklyn, USA One of the topics Catalan artist Ester Partegàs has been addressing in her latest work is the tension between consumption and excess, and the ever-hardening climate of surveillance and control, which has taken grip of public and private spaces. Her work is formally located in the pop tradition, yet ideologically it is shaped by a critical dimension.

Her most recent series of works consists of collage-like manipulated photographs and is called We the People.

The black-and-white photographs show street scenes in New York with people pushing into one another while holding on to their shopping bags. Partegàs has used bright spray paint to blot out the people’s heads. It is a device that strengthens the anonymous side of the urban scenery by obscuring identities. The sprayer aesthetic is reminiscent of typical big city graffiti, and the title (We the People) evokes slogans of political activist groups but lacks a specific concern.

The colorful surfaces are rounded out with expressive graphic elements taken from glossy magazines and bearing statements such as Millions Can’t Relax Tonight or Experience Life. By linking script and image, a critical discourse is generated on consumer behavior in modern Western societies. The anonymity of the passers-by leads to a ruptured relationship between observers and observed. For the Art & Entrepreneurship exhibition tour, Partegàs decided to show two images from the We the People series.

The link to the entrepreneurial values of Credit Suisse lies in the consumerist mood of the work, oscillating between excitement and critique. As Ester Partegàs’ art takes on the realm of human interactions and its social context, the value she is most preoccupied with is Social Responsibility. One of the questions which absorbs her work is, “How can art in our Western consumerist environment contribute to the emergence of a rational society?” It is typical for Partegàs’ objects to have a subtle power of provocation, which plays on social processes and conventions. The urban city model is spreading over the world, and space is getting cramped and expensive. To question the conditions of interhuman relationships and economic exchange is essential for both artists and economic leaders.

Ester Partegàs will develop a new piece for Art & Entrepreneurship. Her works were showcased in 2007 among others at the 2nd Moscow Biennial and in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. www.esterpartegas.com P.76

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Photography by Luis Macias

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 Invaders, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; What You Are, the World Is, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Saturated Fat, Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona 2006 Saturated Fat, Foxy Production, New York; Less World, Uplands Gallery, Melbourne 2005 Barricades, Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid 2004 Same, Icon South Beach, Miami Beach; Civilization Is Overrated, Foxy Production, New York 2003 Dreams Are More Powerful Than Nightmares and Viceversa, Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Second Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art, Moscow Biennial Foundation; Cuestión Xeneracional, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, CGAC, Santiago de Compostela 2006 Tale of Two Cities, Busan Biennial of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Busan; Please Love Me, Walkers Point Center for the Arts 2005 Make It Now. Sculpture in New York, Sculpture Center, Long Island City 2004 Long-Term Installations, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City 2003 The Paper Sculpture Show, Sculpture Center, Long Island City 2002 Outer City, Inner Space, Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York 2001 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: a Spaghetti Western, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

There is no difference between the process and the product. Even if the product is understood as an independent object, already done, shown, sold … that object still has the power of provoking experience, it has the capacity to change, to modify itself and the perception of itself, it keeps on affecting other things and ideas. The product and the process are the same, they are inseparable.

Who are your role models?

Clarice Lispector, M. Antonioni, René Char, Octavio Paz, Chuang Tzu, Iggy Pop, Hélène Cixous, Lao Tse, Alain Resnais, Krishnamurti, Bruce Springsteen, Thomas Hirschhorn, Brancusi, L. Tolstoy, Bruce Lee, Tarkovsky, Bernard Marie Koltès, Varvara Stepanova, Kara Walker, David Lynch, Pablo Neruda, Frida Kahlo, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, etc., etc., etc.

What’s your ultimate aspiration?

I can’t think of an ultimate; that would imply I wished to reach a specific goal, how boring and calculated. I have aspirations that are built in a smaller scale of time, step by step, most of the time without any clear idea of why or where they are going. I guess I can talk of a general aspiration instead of an ultimate one, and this will be to keep on growing in a very flexible, attentive and enthusiastic way towards what feels right in that precise moment.

Can art change society?

Absolutely!

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

All that’s left over from the creative side.

What does the value social responsibility mean to you?

Devote your energy to what you believe in and communicate it, share it, enjoy it and keep challenging it, don’t take it for granted nor as the truth, ever.

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PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN

Born 1966 in Moscow, Russia, lives and works in Kiev, Ukraine and Moscow, Russia Pavel Pepperstein is one of the most influential artists of the new generation in Russia and can be seen as a direct successor to the avant-garde Concept Art of Ilya Kabakov. In 1987, he cofounded the experimental artists group Inspection Medical Hermeneutics, which, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, developed a critical approach toward the influence of Western culture on Russia. Unlike the generally euphoric mood of the day, with its emphasis on the new, these artists created a complex, autistically shaped system of forms and language that critically examined the infiltration of Western influences.

In his own work, Pepperstein likewise advances this critical political dialogue. A typical series of work for example combines flags such as the EU flag or the Nazi banner with colorful child-like floral themes. Pepperstein primarily relies on the media of drawing and painting. His artistic strategy is an energy-charged synthesis of popular motifs used in free association and current discourses.

Pavel Pepperstein reacted to the alleged set of entrepreneurial values from Credit Suisse with the manifestation of two values that are important to him. He thus created two drawings. Both depict a vast landscape with tiny people moving about in the foreground and a line of mountains in the background, one with a huge surreal triangle on the horizon, one with a huge circle. The primal geometrical forms hover over the sceneries like humorous religious icons and are of a purported naivete, which is aligned to the tone of children’s books. Each drawing carries one central big word, again crayoned with lovable diligence: Basis and Hope. Both terms are not actual values. Nevertheless they outline a certain understanding at the core of the values in question. Basis is the foundation of Family, Knowledge and Network, whereas Hope is the driver for Vision and Social Responsibility. In other words: Basis and hope fuel the values cherished by the entrepreneur. Without a basis, without hope, life and business are not manageable.

Pepperstein’s work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions, such as the First Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art, the Moscow Conceptualists at the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, Berlin / Moscow at the Martin Gropius Building in Berlin, and many others.

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 Pavel Pepperstein-Landscapes of Future, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Pavel Pepperstein, Arbeiten aus dem Kupferstichkabinett des Kunstmuseums Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel 2006 Spivaks Generation, Kewenig Galerie, Cologne; Problems on the Way to the Modern World, Galerie Kamm, Berlin 2005 Riders on the Storm, Sutton Lane, London 2004 HYPNOSIS, Elisabeth Kaufmann, Zurich; Dreams, Music and Money, Palais du Diamant, Paris 2003 Battles, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Regina Gallery, Moscow 2002 Götter und Monster, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein 2001 The Girl and the Tunnel, Elisabeth Kaufmann, Zurich 2000 Moses Pavel Pepperstein und Russia, Kunsthaus Zug; Pavel Pepperstein and Victor Pivovarov, Karmelitenkloster Graz

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Cultural Confusion, with Hadassah Emmerich and Yesim Akdeniz Graf, Elisabeth Kaufmann, Zurich 2005 Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), Santiago; Angels of History, MuHKA, Antwerp; Essence of Life – Essence of Art, Ludwig Museum – Museum for Contemporary Art, Budapest 2004 26. Biennial São Paulo, São Paulo; Privatisierungen Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Osteuropa, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Berlin – Moscow, State Historical Museum, Moscow; Moskauer Konzeptualismus, Kupferstichkabinett Berlin 2003 Berlin – Moscow, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Neue Ansätze – Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Moskau, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf 2001 Body of Art, Biennial Valencia 2000 Star of MH, Museum of Contemporary Art, Karaganda, Kazakhstan

What is your favorite artwork in history?

It must be the Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli – I have viewed it many times in Florence. It’s my favorite artwork because it is so very beautiful (laughs), that is the only important thing.

How would you describe your work for Art & Entrepreneurship?

My work is always a response to something. In this case, a response to the values of family, knowledge, vision, network and social responsibility. My set of values are totally different and I tried to give an answer to this antipode in my drawings. Real values cannot be described with words.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

I don’t have an entrepreneurial side.

What does the value family mean to you?

Nothing.

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MAI-THU PERRET

Born 1976 in Geneva, Switzerland, lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland, and New York, USA “This decontextualization of historical fragments is a recurrent interest of mine. I like the idea that you can make a thing mean something new, without completely erasing its original signification,” says artist Mai-Thu Perret, who studied English literature at Cambridge.

For some years, Perret has been writing The Crystal Frontier, a fictional account of a feminist commune founded by five women in the desert of New Mexico. The Crystal Frontier is a fragmented collection of diary entries by its female protagonists reflecting on their lives, hopes and past disappointments, which have resulted in the pioneering of a utopian community.

This narrative, with its escapist attempt to liberation, is the storyline behind Perret’s exceptional work expressed in the media of ceramics, textile, sculpture and film – generally mimicking an amateurish über-female production poise. Life-sized papier-mâché figures are typically featured in Perret’s work. The Apocalypse Ballet from 2006 for instance consists of five such personas. Dressed in utilitarian reformist clothes (crafted by the story’s characters), they perform gymnastic poses referencing constructivist dance and Bauhaus performances.

Mai-Thu Perret has dedicated two art works to Art & Entrepreneurship: a flag, a hand-sewn textile work depicting three orange circles, as well as the piece No More City, a text fragment lamenting the frustration with the capitalist system as the impulse for escape. Neither piece is to be understood as a direct response to the set of entrepreneurial values proposed by Credit Suisse. Instead the very essence of Mai-Thu Perret’s work is to be decoded as deeply entrepreneurial in its perpetual quest to better society. Think again of the female community in the desert of New Mexico. They have a Vision to change the world, the desire to gain Knowledge of the unknown, they practice Social Responsibility, they are building a new Network, and they ultimately form a Family.

Drawing on the therapeutic effects of self-expression and thus refashioning the visions and expressions of the 20th-century avant-garde movements, Perret’s work presents compulsively persuasive fictions of alternate life. Perret has conducted major exhibitions in both the The Renaissance Society in Chicago and the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht.

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Portrait by John Armleder

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2008 Land of Crystal, Kunsthalle St Gallen; The Kitchen, New York 2007 Land of Crystal, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht; Crab Nebula, Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich 2006 And Every Woman Will Be a Walking Synthesis of the Universe, The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Solid Objects, Chisenhale Gallery, London (with Valentin Carron); Apocalypse Ballet, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin 2005 Heroine of the People, Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris; Solid Objects, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva (with Valentin Carron) 2004 Love Thy Sister Like Thyself, Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva 2003 Pure Self-Expression x25, Galerie Francesca Pia, Bern 2002 The Modern Institute, Glasgow

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Eurocentric, Rubell Family Collection, Miami; A Spoken Word Exhibition, Performa, Swiss Institute, New York; Black Noise Show, Mamco, Geneva; Tomorrow, Sonjeart Center and Kumho Art Museum, Seoul; 00 – L’histoire d’une décennie qui n’est pas encore nommée, Biennale de Lyon, Lyon; Pure Self-Expression, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; Bastard Creatures, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; At Home in the Universe, Mongin Art Center, Seoul; Worker Drone Queen, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; Etats (Faites le vous-même), Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2006 Tbilisi 3: Let’s Stay Alive Till Monday, Children National Gallery, Tbilisi; In the Poem About Love the Word Love Does Not Appear, Artists Space, New York; Interstellar Low Ways, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; The Gold Standard, P.S.1, New York; Shiny, Wexner Art Center, Columbus; Goshka Macuga: Sleep of Ulro, A-Foundation, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool 2005 Tbilisi 2, Wednesday Calls the Future, National Arts Center, Tbilisi; NY Twice, Air de Paris, Paris; Model Modernisms, Artists Space, New York 2004 None of the Above, Swiss Institute, New York; The Age of Optimism, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich; Fürchte Dich, Helmhaus, Zurich 2003 Form/Kontext/Troja, Secession, Vienna; The Return of the Creature, Künstlerhaus Thurn + Taxis, Bregenz 2001 Rock Paper Scissors, Galerie Francesca Pia, Bern

ANDRÉ PRETORIUS 182 183

ANDRÉ PRETORIUS

Born 1967 in Bloemfontien, South Africa, lives and works in New York, USA André Pretorius’ latest series of works is a reflection of his fascination with urban Western society, at once critical and laudatory. Born in South Africa, the painter appropriates classical genre scenes and transfers them into pulsating modern life. His compositions and themes are rooted in the realms of the old masters and biblical sagas. In contrast to this, his formal language is an outburst of color and gloss, drawing on pop, photography, contemporary fashion and celebrity hysteria. By mingling these spheres the artist creates an eerie atmosphere of recognition at various levels.

The personal and the historical, the cultural and the quotidian melt into an ironic portrait of the modern world.

At times, the ancient heritage is blatantly obvious when Pretorius portrays urban beauties in their contemporary apparel but sets them up in the classical pose and backdrop of a catholic icon, evoking the romantic feeling of eternal bliss.

JAN BREUGEL, 1568 The Peasant and the Birdnester

BALTHUS, 1933 The Street © 2007, ProLitteris, Zurich

For Credit Suisse and in response to the set of entrepreneurial values André Pretorius has created a painting that refers at once to two different stories. It is inspired by Jan Breugel’s The Peasant and the Birdnester from 1568, which is based on the proverb “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” In the painting the hunter laughs at a man robbing a nest not realizing he is about to fall into a stream. Another version by painter David Vinckeboon shows a spectator of the scene who is being robbed. In his contribution for Art & Entrepreneurship Pretorius replaced the birdnester with a woman bending over for a small coin and combined the two scenes placing them in a contemporary version of Balthus’ The Street from 1933. In the new painting the well-dressed but disdainful spectators are being robbed by a father/daughter combo, while a slick-suited observer, who is tracking the whole scene, is about to lose his footing.

As in genre painting, Pretorius depicts aspects of everyday life by showing us ordinary people engaged in their activities. At the same time he has packed the given set of Credit Suisse values, in particular Network, Family and Social Responsibility, into a complex tracery of urban contemporary narration. Just like Pretorius’ present work entitled A Bird in the Hand, genre paintings were often based on a proverb and thus had a strong moral content. By placing a large bank sign on one of the buildings in the background, tongue-in-cheek, the artist informs the contemplator about the work’s originating impulse.

Pretorius’ flawless painting technique opens up a forgotten world of shameless beauty countered by the tropes of faultiness which, as he tells us, have remained unchanged with the passage of time. www.andrepretorius.com P.92

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ANDRÉ PRETORIUS 184 185

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2007 André Pretorius, solo exhibition, ZieherSmith, New York; Volta Show, ZieherSmith, Basel 2004 A Year in the Life, solo exhibition, ZieherSmith, New York; Abeyance, ZieherSmith, New York 2003 Dreamy, ZieherSmith, New York

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

Ultimately it is the product, but hopefully the process is self-evident within the product. The product is the sum of the process.

What is your ultimate aspiration?

My ultimate aspiration is simply to sustain my family and myself through my own work and to be able to paint whatever I like.

Who are your heroes?

I don’t have any personal heroes, people whom I would model myself after in any strict sense. The people that I would consider heroes would be individuals such as Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and Martin Luther King Jr. People who have striven for the greater good with the highest moral ideals regardless of the personal costs.

In which ways can art change society?

I think that art with a capital A has a very limited capacity to effect major social change in a free or tolerant society.

But where it is curtailed I think it has immense power.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

The truth of the matter is that I don’t think I have a capitalist bone in my body, but I have managed to survive in New York. I supplement my art career by making very detailed copies of paintings for Sotheby’s, and every year or two they have to remind me to raise my fees (laughs). But it is rewarding in itself to have developed such a relationship.

What does the value social responsibility mean to you?

For me, at the very least it means to do no harm, not to move at someone else’s expense. It means don’t open a pub that ruins the neighbor’s lives, avoid the investment that ultimately is based on denying people a comfortable retirement, walk instead of driving, support social causes you believe in. Maybe if you are consistent enough in your practices you’ll leave the world a better place, but I think consistency is the key.

DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY 186 187

DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY

Born in 1981 in Stony Brook, New York, USA, lives and works in New York, USA David Sherry’s black-and-white photo of a young man looking into the sky, seen only from the torso upwards, with his head surrounded by branches and twigs, shows a male sensibility which is seldom seen in the public eye.

Upon closer inspection the upper part of the image, depicting a strange formulation of twigs, has been mirrored in a way that brings a dramatic and abstract quality to the image. In his photographic installations Sherry combines such portraits with studies, such as a still life made of fake fruit hanging from glistening threads against a black background. Again the fruit diagram is mirrored, this time manifold, accentuating a theatrical quality.

The freshness of these pictures lies in the mix of an undercurrent idea of protest, rooted in the urban youth context, romanticism and the classical, combined in an art that seems to flee the obvious. David Benjamin Sherry is a seeker of mystery. As photographer Justine Kurland has once stated: “The act of photographing casts a spell that turns the banal into the supernatural.”

Complete control of the formal and technical aspects of image-making combined with the ability to show the peopled world that surrounds him with a fresh sensibility is a rare combination and makes the young artist, who received his training in the prestigious Yale Photography program, one of the exciting young voices working in the medium.

David Benjamin Sherry’s pictorial world is an obvious choice for Art & Entrepreneurship. The values Family and Network are overtly present in his quality of creating a world populated by ethereal figures, while at the same time these figures are recurring protagonists from his real-life surroundings. The value of Vision can be detected in Sherry’s unique ability to charge his creations with a magic quality, referencing elusive topics such as life and death, or truth. Sherry will be present in the Credit Suisse exhibition tour with a series of new work, shot in California in December 2007.

David Benjamin Sherry’s photographs have been exhibited in a number of quality galleries in and outside the USA. P.98

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2006 But Take Me to the Haven of Your Bed Was Something That You Never Said, Galerie Lisa Ruyter, Vienna

work is about. I think his films are the best; he incorporates great music with his films too, so I think I was naturally drawn to them. Also his interest in the occult has brought on my own interpretation of the occult, and spirituality is a huge part of my work now as well.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Fractured in Aspect, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; Artists Swap Meet for Ooga Booga LA, High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree, CA; Psychic Realities, Lundbeck Austria, Vienna 2006 A Rabbit as King of Ghosts, MitchellInnes & Nash, New York; Smoking Mirrors, China Art Objects, Los Angeles, CA 2005 5 X U, Team Gallery, New York; Red White and Blue, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York How would you describe your work?

My work stems from personal beliefs in Magic and the power of Nature over the human soul. I take photographs with color film and print them all myself. I do not ever use digital tools while producing photographs; although the images seem to be manipulated, they are by hand. Taking a photograph records a time and place for me, a memory. When printing my pictures I can begin to manipulate that recorded memory and alter it; change the colors, size, cut and paste new images onto the original photograph, flip negatives and rotate images. All of these techniques are done to form a new reality for myself, a fantasy world that I created. Taking the photographs is half the process, while printing them is the other half of my work.

What is more important, the process or the product?

Both are crucial to my artwork, there’s no doubt about it for me. I learn and grow through the process. I release a lot of energy while producing my work. Sometimes it can take up to a year or more to print an image and for it to be perfect. A lot goes on in the duration of a year during one’s life, especially at 26 years old. I live for my final images, though I wouldn’t have the final photograph without the process, and so they balance each other.

What is your favorite art work in history and why?

I’m an avid moviegoer and watcher. I think film and music influence me the most of all art forms. Jean Cocteau is one of my favorite filmmakers. His films were all made by hand. They were filled with tons of trickery and effects to create magical stories but were made between the 1930s and 1950s, before computers were used in filmmaking to create effects. The handwork is beautiful in his films; to me the effects are done so well and are also more believable because you know they actually existed for the movie. He uses film as a device to trick his viewers and make them believe in his fantasy. I find it more believable than any other filmmaker’s attempt, especially now, in a digital age where nothing is believable anymore, just computer graphics.

Who are the protagonists that have had the most influence on your work?

Musicians such as Brian Eno and bands such as Nirvana have influenced me greatly, to name just two. There are plenty more musicians that wake me up each day and ideas spring from their songs. I like to think of my art as a musical form, that the photographs act almost as musical notes, and rhythms are created upon a wall. I listen to music 90% of my day; it shapes my workflow and ideas. Also filmmaker Kenneth Anger has had a huge impact on me. I have watched his films religiously for the past few years and picked them apart to see and fully understand what his

What is your entrepreneurial side?

When making art I feel as if it’s up to the artist to be their own boss most of the time. You have to be motivated to make a living with your artwork these days. I try not to get wrapped up in the idea of self-promotion, I think it’s kind of a gross quality and unnatural. If you want your work to be seen, then show it to people who you think may like it and understand it. I really enjoy meeting curators and gallerists who are down to earth and easygoing. Most importantly they have to fully believe in you and your art. I’d like to think that I’m not a shameless self promoter. My work is personal and emotional for me. I love when people want to see it and enjoy it, but I could never push my art on anyone. I think people who do that act out of desperation and are probably insecure about their art work.

What do the values family, social responsibility and network mean to you?

My art form draws from my own life experiences; I enjoy traveling and seeing magical places. I have a family of friends that are truly inspiring to me. I spend my off-time amongst this family of friends, who are mostly based in New York City. I find them to be truly eccentric and creative people who are constantly challenging me. My close family of friends are extremely important to my art-making and well-being. They provide an emotional support network and we expand our minds together, we have laughed, cried, experienced death and life to its fullest within this family.

We function as a family too, eating and cooking, lending ourselves to one another, it reminds me of my youth with my immediate family, whom I’m very close to as well. My immediate family, whom I don’t see as often because I chose to move from home, Woodstock NY, is extremely supportive and loving towards my artwork and me as well.

I talk with them very often. I guess the friend family has had a more immediate impact on my life experiences for the past 10 years, whereas my parents and siblings raised me from birth and created my life until I decided to leave home and start my own life.

What do you want to achieve in the future?

There are so many things I’d like to achieve in the future. I guess I want to live out my fantasies. The ideas that make up my pictures are my dreams and fantasies, so I would like to live in a world with them. I think by traveling a lot, especially to national parks and natural monuments I really feel the best, spiritually and mentally. So I would like to see all of them around the US. I think I would like to have a small house in the Pacific Northwest, I love it out there. I would also love for my pictures to be part of art history, to leave my mark on the history of photography, using my dreams and fantasies.

MATTHEW SMITH 190 191

MATTHEW SMITH

Born in 1976 in Burton on Trent, UK, lives and works in London, UK Matthew Smith has stated in the past that making good art is about pointing out something that is already there, not projecting something “inner.” Manipulating objects, things that already exist in the world, is his artistic starting point. Duvets, nails, record covers, shelves are presented in many seemingly strange ways in order to elude their original functional fate. Focusing on them as an object gives them a new and unexpected aura which evokes a completely other set of associations.

Smith’s interventions in displaying his objects, often things he affectionately likes, are subtle. The piece A Hook Is a Nail dating from 2006 consists of a 4-inch nail coated with white enamel paint and decorated with singular, thin circles of pastel colors. The sculpture is set up in a way that the largest part of the nail sticks out of the wall horizontally, so as to be potentially used as a hook to hang things from. The baffling and bemusing piece no longer represents a tool but becomes the materialization of an idea. Making it appear familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, it is charged with another meaning and becomes a variation of its original self; the nail is no longer a nail.

The duvet piece Matthew Smith has selected for Art & Entrepreneurship comprises a common duvet displayed and arranged with the help of a wooden framework. The normally unexciting object “duvet,” now all crumpled and standing up, is instantly tweaked with personality and characterizes Smith’s fondness for an overall simplicity, albeit underpinned by dry humor. The ability and the willingness to perceive and appreciate objects or situations in new ways is a quality which distinguishes the entrepreneur: to see an opportunity where others see nothing.

Building on his interest in the “state of affairs” that rises from combining objects in certain unexpected ways, Smith’s conceptual rigor is striking and strong. He has exhibited in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries in London and will be holding solo shows at White Columns and Rivington Arms in New York in 2008.

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2008 Mary Mary, Glasgow; Rivington Arms, New York; White Columns, New York 2007 Things are Thin, STORE, London 2006 Associates Gallery, London

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 La Pensée Sauvage, Chez Valentin, Paris; EASTInternational, Norwich Gallery 2006 New Contemporaries, London / Liverpool; The Social Ocean, Temporary Contemporary, London 2005 Leviathan, Candid Arts Trust, London; New Opportunities For Focussed Listening, Lieu Unique, Nantes 2004 Rain and Tears, Borderline, Nantes; Untitled, Sumo exhibition space, London 2003 Off the Peg, Mid Pennine Gallery, Burnley, 110 Norwich Row, Sheffield

What is your favorite artwork in history?

It changes; recently I’ve been thinking quite a lot about Frank Stella’s black paintings.

Who are your role models?

None spring to mind.

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

The ideas are the most important aspect of the work; it’s very important for me for the work to act as a kind of hinge around which ideas can move freely. In a sense the process of making the work and the completed object are just a part of the circumstances that give way to that flow of concepts; and so I can’t say that either feels any more important than the other.

In which ways can art change society?

I think it’s crucial to recognize the level at which the discourses of conceptual art operate. The most interesting works of art play with the form of “things,” with the subjective facts that make up an idea of reality or of the “world,” but always in order to reveal its mechanisms rather than change them. Radical transformations of form and perception occur in all successful works of art, but those radical transformations often take place within the lightest of gestures.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

I’d like to think that the biggest risks I take are conceptual ones.

What does the value vision mean to you?

It’s not a term I’d instinctively use to talk about production. For me, making art is more often about uncertainty, complexity and losing one’s expectations, perhaps mixed with moments of insight.

THUKRAL & TAGRA 194 195

THUKRAL & TAGRA

Jiten Thukral, born 1976 in Jalandhar, India, and Sumir Tagra, born 1978 in New Delhi, India, both live and work in New Delhi, India Thukral & Tagra, or T&T as the artists brand themselves, belong to a new generation of young Indian artists reflecting on and working in India, which in the first decade of the 21st century is a place of over-stimulation and decadence, keen to find a synergy between its pasts and futures. The artists, having previously been active in communications, break the boundaries between crafts and art, fluttering between contexts and thus following a desire to produce democratic art for the masses.

The eclectic mix-up of media that T&T work with reflects the hysterical consumerist rage of the country: graphics, videos, music, interiors, product design, painting, photography. And all of this in a peripatetic Technicolor aesthetic which draws from pop, pop culture, surrealism, photorealism and postmodernism.

Their applied work is signed with the brand Bosedk, which in Punjabi is an abusive term. Using this platform, T&T set out to infiltrate all media. The show Everyday Bosedk pushed the Bosedk logo further by equating the sacred space of the art institution with the supermarket and thus displaying art products next to quotidian disposables with hundreds of repeated logos and labels. Faux-Victorian portraits of young Punjabi men were to be found on bottles of chocolate syrup, evoking ideas of a neo-classicist home-grown orientalism.

In reaction to the entrepreneurial brief of Credit Suisse, T&T created a large-format diptych painting focusing on their own tongue-in-cheek entrepreneurial project: the Bosedk brand. Rows and rows of colorful packaged goods float in a dreamlike scenery, surrounded and encircled by decorative patterns made of miniature plants, vegetables, animals and little people, creating a strange visual puzzle. The highly entertaining painting mixes pop art idioms (the serial products!) with ethnic references and pseudo-traditional ornaments.

The artists have not translated single values, such as Family or Network, but instead depicted their own idea of entrepreneurship: to create a brand and to produce enjoyable work with a democratic outreach. Their artistic strategy in the past has involved the production of stickers and buttons, which they gave away freely, involving everybody in the delightful process of intelligent consumption.

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 Put it On, Bose Pacia, New York; Everyday Bosedk, Nature Morte, New Delhi 2006 Vector Classics, Jehangir Nicholson Gallery, NCPA, Mumbai

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Animamix Biennial 2007, Museum of Contemporary Art of Shanghai (MoCA); The New Wave, Marella Gallery, Milan; Adolescere-Domus, Installation at Art Statements, Art Basel 38, presented by Nature Morte and Bose Pacia; Size Matters, Art Consult, New Delhi; Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai 2006 Global Edit 06, Armani Casa with Wallpaper Magazine, Milan 2005 New Paintings, Nature Morte, New Delhi; Iconography Installation Project, Nature Morte, New Delhi 2004 Visual Dialogue, Hype Gallery, London; Visual Dialogue, Bombay

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

Process and product, it’s like body and soul.

What’s your ultimate aspiration?

To refine ourselves and to be happy.

Who are your role models?

Damien Hirst, Subodh Gupta and Takashi Murakami.

Does art have the potential to change society?

Yes, but it’s tough. As it is a specialized language, it may not be understood by the masses.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

Managing and creating an environment of learning.

What does the value social responsibility mean to you?

It’s more a question of the context you’re in and where you belong to. Every human being has an obligation to do something, or care for someone, as part of their job or role in life. The role may differ from one person to another, but the ideal self should be answerable.

MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS 198 199

MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS

Markus Miessen, born 1978 in Bonn, Germany, and Ralf Pflugfelder, born 1975 in Kösching, Germany, both live and work in London, UK, Zurich, Switzerland, and Berlin, Germany The globally operating architects Miessen & Ploughfields were invited to design the exhibition architecture of Art & Entrepreneurship due to their practice of adopting architecture as an intersection for dialogue and for their spatial thinking referencing art, infrastructure and alternative modes of production.

The architecture was designed as a result of the extreme demands of a globally traveling exhibition – dealing with highly diverse spaces ranging from avant-garde art institutions to conference centers to commercial art fairs – that only ever stays in a single venue for less than ten days. As the show spends more time in containers and Par Avion than within the institutions that house its actual content, the storage system that guarantees safe shipping was considered – as objet trouvé – an integral part of the exhibition. The resulting installation consists of a variety of spatial constellations of storage crates that become the primary structure that exposes the art to the audience.

Zones defined by gray felt and electric bulbs reference the idea of the collector’s home.

Miessen & Ploughfields have built a gallery space for Max Wigram Gallery in London and a site-specific installation titled The Violence of Participation for the Lyon Biennial 2007. They are now working on a number of projects in locations ranging from Switzerland to the Middle East, including a high-alpine residency and institute that accommodates the private library of the Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, which will be made publicly accessible.

Markus Miessen is an architect, researcher, educator and writer. In 2002, he set up Studio Miessen, a platform for spatial strategy and critical cultural analysis. As an architect, Miessen collaborates with Ralf Pflugfelder. In the past, Miessen has advised the European Kunsthalle Cologne on its spatial strategy, and wrote cultural policy proposals for the think tank for everyday democracy Demos. Currently, he is developing a long-term project with the Serpentine Gallery (London). As a writer, Miessen has contributed, edited and advised globally, with published articles in more than 30 international titles, from academic to scientific to popular culture. He is the editor of The Violence of Participation (Sternberg Press, 2007), co-editor of With/Without – Spatial Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East (Bidoun, 2007, w. Basar and Carver) and Did Someone Say Participate? (MIT Press / Revolver, 2006, w. Basar), and co-author of Spaces of Uncertainty (Müller+Busmann, 2002, w. Cupers). Teaching as a unit master at London’s Architectural Association, he has recently initiated the AA Winter School Middle East, which he directs.

He is currently a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, London.

Ralf Pflugfelder has worked as an architect in Berlin, New York, Paris and London. In 2004, he founded an independent architecture and design studio with Magnus Nilsson in London. The office has participated and was shortlisted in various international architecture and design competitions. In 2005, Pflugfelder taught as a unit master at the Architectural Association Summer School in London. His work has been published in a range of international architecture and design periodicals.

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Who are your heroes?

When we were younger, our heroes were Danger Mouse, Inspector Clouseau and The A-Team. Originally, heroes are demigods or the offspring of a deity. One of the reasons that many students leaving architecture and design schools today no longer want to experiment on their own projects is that the culture of idols and heroes has become so saturated that almost everyone now wants to be a follower rather than a proactive player, or indeed an entrepreneur. We don’t enjoy the promotion of architectural cults like those of “starchitects.” One of the most boring things, in our opinion, is a kind of hero worship that is based on the idea of uncritical admiration while living in a bubble in which one is neither accountable nor responsible for the inherent risk that any operational mode of practice brings with it. We enjoy the diverse practices of people such as Harald Szeemann, Daniel Birnbaum, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Cedric Price, Rem Koolhaas, Martin Margiela, Raf Simons, Ingo Niermann, Eva Munz, Erhard Eppler, Zamp Kelp, Chantal Mouffe, Multiplicity, Jacques Rancière, Kurt Schwitters, Kazuyo Sejima, Åbäke, Carsten Höller, Teddy Cruz, Eyal Weizman, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Sarah Herda, Shumon Basar, Patricia Reed, International Festival, Ou Ning, Raqs Media Collective, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Tirdad Zolghadr and many others. We take pleasure in their work and share their enthusiasm. We like to think of them as friends, colleagues, neighbors and partners-in-crime. But are they really our heroes? If anything, a hero could be someone who, in the face of danger, displays courage and the will for self-sacrifice. Funnily, observing those people above (and ourselves included), one can sense very little motivation for self-sacrifice as far as we can tell. In the culture that we tend to promote, there is more egotism than courage, more discursive than moral excellence. But we are not trying to sound negative here. The opposite is the case: We believe that only through relentless optimism and the will to change, little by little, things will eventually be transformed. And all those people above, and of course so many more, are helping to achieve this, at least in the part of culture that we have access to.

How would you describe your work?

We are hesitant to define our practice as something static, something that can be clearly defined. We are romantics, but we are not nostalgic. Nostalgia hinders change. And we are interested in change. We have many interests that we pursue in different ways. Right now, we are working in a variety of social, political and economic contexts.

We are working on architectural and urban projects in Switzerland, Germany and the United Arab Emirates; we are teaching, we curate and write, we participate in biennials and exhibitions from China to France, and we attend conferences in Mexico, the US, Istanbul and China. More generally speaking, we are interested in the politics of space and how architecture and urbanism can play a role in altering the parameters of the former. However, the nature of that scale doesn’t prevent us from doing small-scale installations, like the one for Credit Suisse or at the Lyon Biennial, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

Which is more important in your work, the process or the product?

The product. Whether this is a book, a building, an installation or a conference. Process is overrated. Especially because once the product is out there, nobody cares about the process any more. Once there is a visibility to something, it gets judged against its physicality and content. Obviously this is the result of a process, but at the end of the day it is not the process that one is facing, but the results of it. The cleverness of the process dictates the result, but this doesn’t make the result less important; even more so, the result should continuously be interrogated through the process, i.e. to never arrive at a point where one understands the product as a final, solidified statement. Everything is always in a state of flux. What seems most important is that the product reflects the process, i.e. that through the product one can also understand where there are ruptures, where during the process one has experienced breakages, dead ends and so forth.

What’s your ultimate aspiration?

Primarily, to alter spatial and political frameworks through the change of parameters that we can influence. Further, we wouldn’t mind to live in a house high up in the Swiss Alps. Love is the ultimate aspiration of course.

What’s your entrepreneurial side?

We enjoy being everywhere at once. We are optimists. Our relentless optimism helps us to constantly seek new potentials and possibilities. We believe that everything should have already happened yesterday, which means we are constantly on the move, persistently searching for opportunities. As Hans Ulrich Obrist says: “Sleep is harmful.”

There is an entrepreneurial side to trying to achieve the most intriguing architectural proposals, in the sense that you and your client have to go down an unknown and possibly radical and therefore risky route to accomplish something no one might have considered in the past, but is probably the most surprising and challenging outcome.

What does the value network mean to you?

The values here are arguably generic. This is not meant at all in a negative way, but rather as something that has potential. Something which can be investigated from many different perspectives. The values that Credit Suisse put up here are understood by us as a magnifying glass, some abstract goggles with which to look at the world and, at times, perceive certain situations and social contexts in a different light. Networks are key. Networks are the equivalent of driving one car with five drivers in ten different directions. A car that is no longer one but many.

Networks give you the prospect of being able to work with very interesting people you haven’t even met yet.

ABOUT ART 202 203

ABOUT ART MICHELLE NICOL

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HANS ULRICH OBRIST

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OU NING

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MICHELLE NICOL 204 205

MICHELLE NICOL Lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland

Michelle Nicol is an art historian, curator and managing partner of advertising agency glamour engineeringTM. She has worked as critic and curator of contemporary art for international institutions including the Berlin Biennale and the Museum Ludwig Cologne. She has been an appointed curator of the windsor collection for contemporary photography, an author of various artist monographs and a contributor to Parkett, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Welt am Sonntag, Self Service and others.

In 2001 Michelle Nicol co-founded the advertising agency glamour engineeringTM together with partners from classic advertising. Here she takes the lead in overseeing client relationships with art-related projects and brand entertainment. In 2006 she co-curated the exhibition modus at Neue Kunst Halle St. Gallen, bringing together high-quality textile production and contemporary art.

As the curator of Art & Entrepreneurship Michelle Nicol gives an account of the state of contemporary art today, the work process and the categories of art you can expect.

Photography by Walter Pfeiffer

The participants were selected to represent a cross-section of what is currently happening in contemporary art.

Typically, they deploy a variety of media, techniques and materials, and often several at once. The exhibition therefore includes not only video, painting, sculpture, photography and drawings but also unusual media, as in Moroccan artist Latifa Echakhch’s variable floor piece made of linoleum.

The artists responded with a wide variety of strategies and approaches, mirroring the characteristically heterogeneous nature of today’s art. For instance, one of the artists stipulated that he remain anonymous, contributing a work that is unusually tender and even romantic – an envelope on which intricate, unfamiliar pencilled signs radiate a kind of magic. The purple scraps of fabric inside, imprinted with a serial number, seem to be charged with evocative meaning. The fabric is a ready-made, something the artist found and simply put in the envelope. By concealing her identity, she addresses the question of circulation. How is art received, how is it bought and sold? But also: Can a collector own an idea? Or: What mechanisms, including monetary ones, are responsible for circulation? What happens when the artist is not mentioned by name in the catalogue or on the invitation?

And at auction: To what extent does the artist’s anonymous identity affect prices? When it comes to acquiring a work of art, buyers still tend to rely on criteria defined in the 19th century: Authorship, originality, authenticity, craftsmanship, message. By concealing himself, the artist essentially contests those conventions. On the other hand, rumors and the promise of discovering his identity could lead to an even greater demand for his work.

VALUES THAT MATTER – CURATING ART & ENTREPRENEURSHIP Contemporary art today is a chaotic mix, incorporating entertainment, design, architecture, pop music, business and popular culture. Within these fields of culture, in the widest sense of the word, art holds an executive position.

To put it differently: Art is the cultural leader and, as such, sets standards for other fields that interact with it in order to be abreast, if not ahead of the times. This development is related to an overall expansion of art worldwide, which may well be symptomatic of the fact that it is, indeed, becoming more democratic, playing a role in the lives of more and more people, as an inspiration, as a provocateur or as a form of entertainment.

The ever-growing popular presence of contemporary art over the past decade is indisputable; it has acquired a key position in society to such an extent that it figures as a dream career among teenagers: Wouldn’t it be cool to be Damien Hirst or Pipilotti Rist? Art is embraced and does not resist the embrace, as shown by the artists in the 1960s who came up with the idea of producing multiples, namely, relatively large editions of artworks, marketed at reasonable prices. Ironically, today the most desirable and sought-after art must be exclusive, with a price to match.

For Art & Entrepreneurship, we invited 19 young artists from 16 countries to produce new works. We specified five entrepreneurial values – Vision, Knowledge, Network, Family and Social Responsibility – from which they could choose, reacting to one or several, and submitting as many works as they pleased.

The curatorial strategy of commissioning artists to think about and interpret a number of themes was the most common form of artistic production until well into the 19th century. It was exciting to see how a committed generation of young artists dealt with the brief, especially since critical thinking is not just the preserve of so-called autonomous zones; it is obviously also possible, and even encouraged, within the framework of a defined exhibition project.

Humor is a contemporary device that keeps art from succumbing to rigidity. Humor is subversive, undermines dogma and informs artistic production of the kind that consistently subverts its own laws. Take Nicola Gobbetto’s Boys & Girls, his little triangular tables on wheels with their pink and light-blue tops. The way in which they oppose the grand gesture traditionally associated with art and its production is disconcerting and almost ridiculous. On second thought, however, we discover a reference to the Constructivists, to their use of form (the triangle) and to their objectives, namely, to bring art closer to life, close enough, in fact, to exert an influence. The laminated surface reminds one of school benches and yet also of the furniture designed by Ettore Sottsass and his Memphis group.

In addition, the tables can be read as representing young individuals of both genders, influencing one another in mutual exchange. In this sense, the work offers a surprisingly direct interpretation of the values, Family, Network and Social Responsibility.

Plamen Dejanoff from Bulgaria also takes a humorous approach, though he does not bow to the ribald humor of slapstick. For Art & Entrepreneurship, he produced a bronze Pinocchio, 1.7 m tall, explicitly choosing to depict a fairy-tale figure designed to instil the proper values in children, the same values that stand an entrepreneur in good stead. Laconic and witty, Russian artist Pavel Pepperstein counters the values of the entrepreneur with two of his own, Basis and Hope, communicating his understanding of them in a pair of watercolors. The two concepts can, of course, also be considered the very foundation of entrepreneurial thinking, inasmuch as nothing constructive can be achieved without Basis and without Hope.

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Be that as it may, what does all of this really have to do with entrepreneurship? The question is predictable because current art necessarily implodes the very laws by which it is governed. As Jörg Heiser, editor-in-chief of the London art magazine frieze, puts it: “The most interesting contemporary art makes those look dumb, who cannot resist the temptation of prescribing norms for it.”

We know, of course, that the relationship between entrepreneurial values and a duvet might be a conundrum to some. We are speaking about English artist Matthew Smith’s Duvet with Stand No. 7. The wooden stand is 1.6 m high; cross beams mounted on top form three arms through and over which the rolled-up duvet has been draped, making it look like a weird, lethargic animal with a caterpillar body and a frog’s mouth. The mouth is made by folding the outermost edge of the roll. The materials are bare. The duvet has no cover. The wood looks as if it has come direct from a DIY supply store. Smith’s artistic praxis is a meditation on the idea of configuring objects in different ways so that they evoke new associations. The object’s original life has become obsolete.

Once again: What does a duvet have to do with entrepreneurial values? Matthew Smith makes something out of nothing. He starts with nothing and ends up with an idea. He discovers potential in something that others see only as wood and duvet. This is a typical entrepreneurial skill: finding potential where others see nothing.

Other artists took a more manifest, straightforward approach to the values specified in the brief. Singapore artist Heman Chong produced five posters, each announcing a lecture delivered in 1977 at the Department of Future Fictions, Redhill College of Singapore. The topics of the five lectures each cover one of the values, for instance, We Have a Vision for Tomorrow or New Member in the Family. In combination, they provide evidence of a series of fictional events, circumscribing a romantic vision of the future.

A more basic treatment of entrepreneurship informs the contributions of Mamiko Otsubo from Japan and Mai-Thu Perret from Switzerland. The subject matter of Otsubo’s suite of sculptures is culled from representations of nature and the history of design in the 20th century. She says, “It was more appropriate for me to think of them [the values] as essential elements in a toolkit for me as an artist.” Perret’s artistic production is inspired by the idea of the smallest possible economic structure. Her works are based on The Crystal Frontier, a fictional diary of entries made by a group of women dropouts, who have abandoned city life and retreated to the New Mexican desert to act out their vision of the perfect commune. Her works consist of the hypothetical products created by this group of women, making the entrepreneurial potential of a microeconomy an intrinsic constituent of her œuvre.

In conclusion, let us ask one question: What kind of art has potential? One possible answer might read: Art that conveys a new experience. Harald Szeemann, the great Swiss exhibition maker of the 20th century once said quite simply: Art is always ahead of the Zeitgeist.

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HANS ULRICH OBRIST

Born in May 1968 in Zurich, Switzerland, lives and works in London, UK In 1993 Obrist founded the Robert Walser Museum. Since then he has been in charge of the Migrateurs program at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, where he was contemporary art curator until 2005. He is currently codirector of exhibitions and programs and director of international projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London. He has organized numerous exhibitions including Do it (more than 30 versions since 1994); Cities on the Move (with Hou Hanru) 1997; the first Berlin Biennial, 1998; Mutations, 2000 Bordeaux; Utopia Station for the 50th Venice Biennial. He was curator for the Dakar Biennial in 2004. Since moving to London he has coorganized a number of exhibitions including Uncertain States of America, 2006, Serpentine Gallery; China Power Station Part I, Battersea Power Station, 2006.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is furthermore the publisher of various artist books by, among others, John Baldessari and Matthew Barney.

Architect and collaborator Rem Koolhaas has stated Obrist’s quality as being a producer of “cluster communities.”

Koolhaas: “He bonds and intersects intelligences – each conversation doubled within spiralling references to the other forms of intelligence, beauty, professionalism.”

Photography by Olafur Eliasson

For Art & Entrepreneurship Hans Ulrich Obrist gives an overview of the forward-leading trends in current artmaking, exhibiting, distribution and writing. He furthermore presents us with a recent project reflecting the future: The future formula list. It involves statements from dozens of renowned artists, writers, architects and entrepreneurs.

THE FUTURE WILL BE …

Fellow curator and Stadelschule Art Academy director Daniel Birnbaum had this to say of the future: “If the future existed in a concrete sense that could be discerned by a ‘better brain,’ we wouldn’t be so seduced by the past. But the future,” he observes via Nabakov, “has no such reality. It is but a ‘spectre of thought’.” Therefore, any attempt to forecast the future is a provocation to rethink the past and an opportunity to come to terms with the present.

Working through past gestures, of course, is hardly novel. In the 1960s, one observes pop exemplars like Lichtenstein painting their way through Abstract Expressionism, and before that, Cubists confronting primitivism – to name but two examples. For brevity’s sake, perhaps it’s best we simply concur with Duchamp that art is ultimately a game, a continually articulated struggle between the present, the past and the future. In this model, the only constant is change itself. This is a vision of history under perennial negotiation; historical truth as forever in situ.

Rewind fifty years. At mid-century, Jacques Fresco emerged as one of America’s preeminent engineers and is today a well-known futurologist. Trained in industrial design, he worked for both the government and private sector as a research designer and churned out an astounding roll-call of inventions: systems for noiseless aircraft, threewheeled cars and proposals for floating cities and prefab houses. His aesthetic has become perhaps one of the

most clichéd visions of tomorrow, an Epcot Center meets The Jetsons’ picture of white orb-like structures, geodesic domes and pristinely choreographed urban planning. Fresco’s future may, of course, seem outmoded, and his writings have been subject to criticism for their fascistic undertones of order and uniformity, but his contributions are etched in the popular psyche and his eco-friendly concepts continue to influence our present generation of progressive architects, city planners and designers.

What, then, of the future? To begin, we should emphasize that visions of the future evolve over time and are many.

The future, in other words, is both variant and plural. In the teens of the 20th century, the Italian Futurists issued manifestos, poems, paintings and sculptures, promulgating a politically charged future of man, machine and power; in the 1920s and 1930s, De Stijl promoted endless geometrical variations on primary colors and the Bauhaus a future of economizing rationality; in the 1950s, Ad Reinhardt spoke of his black paintings as the final ever paintings; and beginning in the 1960s, English architect Cedric Price advanced an evolutional model of building premised upon flexibility, change and renewal. The unrealized Fun Palace, 1964, was designed to adjust to its users’ ever-changing needs. The Potteries Thinkbelt, 1966, proposed the construction of a university in England’s North Staffordshire region across a series of railway tracks to be rearticulated as a set of interchangeable mobile units, which could be attached and detached as necessary.

Generally speaking, we might say that the post-1960 art world has given way to an era of innumerable futures, relativism and constant negotiation. It would be hopelessly naïve to attempt an authoritative summation of this activity – indeed, I doubt any such overview is possible, or even desirable – so I will single out only a few of the most salient trends. Marshall McLuhan’s famous media theorizing of the late 1960s evokes one rather Utopian vision of tomorrow: the “Global Village.” In a similar, though less well-known vein, Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema of 1970 articulated the TV as an emancipatory forum for connectivity and viewer engagement. “It is now obvious that we are entering a completely new video environment and image-exchange lifestyle,” Youngblood wrote. “The videosphere will alter the minds of men and the architecture of their dwellings.” These sentiments gained considerable traction among Fluxus activities of the time and a first generation of video art such as that of Nam June Paik.

They also resurfaced in much 1990s globalization and technological discourse. The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism at the turn of the decade presaged a moment of renewed and unprecedented internationalism, and a reworking of McLuhanism into “new media” hype. Artists and art institutions began experimenting with the Internet’s novel distributive flows for the first time, and the nineties have come to be regarded as the “biennial decade,” a qualifier that refers to the unseating of the hierarchically dominant institutional roles of museums and galleries by the “global” biennial. This exhibition model represents a natural by-product of the rise of independent curating and a pragmatic on-the-run resolution to the organization of exhibitions and art projects in contexts without entrenched precedents, often in the absence of sophisticated contemporary art institutions. In roughly the past 15 years, biennials have grown precipitously and are especially noticeable in emerging economies, from Cuba to Korea, Senegal, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and beyond.

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In Futureways, 2004, artist Rita McBride solicited pieces of short fiction from over a dozen fellow artists, curators and writers about the future of art. The contributions are telling. The majority mention biennials and triennials, though none discuss art fairs. Many dismiss the relevance of the Western cultural epicenter in favor of those in China, Japan and, in certain sci-fi variants, outer space – a vision consistent with today’s numerous cultural expansions into Russia, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America and beyond. And a couple raise perhaps the most interesting issue of art’s future as codified data. Laura Cottingham, in her essay set in 2199, had this to say: “Although today it is well known that the artistic contributions which are most likely to endure through time are those created without tangible form – words, dance and music – the 20th century was the last century to believe absolutely in the permanence of art objects.” She goes on to call it “The Century of Grasping” and dismisses its “false hope for permanence” and its retrograde fetishization of objects over ideas.

There is one final project I would like to highlight: the formula list. The undertaking has the working title of “Out of the Equation: Roads to Reality,” and is inspired by Roger Penrose’s ground-breaking publication, Roads to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, 2004. It is both a calculated and chaotic look inside the minds of some of our great contemporary thinkers. Such a compilation can never make claims to predict the future but in contradistinction to the dizzying levels of mediation that today cloud the creative process – what the media reports, what press releases state – it shines an unobstructed gaze into these figures’ thinking process and indicates what at least some micro-futures constitute.

This squares with the open-source movement famously set in train during the 1990s by computer programmers such as Richard Stallman and Linus Torvald, inventor of Linux. This is a future of viral P2P interfaces and user-led progress, gaining increasingly widespread appeal today through vehicles like Wikipedia and You-Tube. The art world, predicated on an economic system of exclusivity and artificially erected boundaries to entry, has been slow to adapt, but, as with the music and film industries, adaptation is likely only a matter of time.

THE FUTURE WILL BE …

Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize Winner in Literature 2007, has recently spoken of a future without museums. It’s not that she’s fundamentally opposed to these institutions, but she’s worried that their prioritization of material objects from the past may not be enough to convey functional meaning to tomorrow’s generations. Her 1999 novel, Mara and Dann, is premised on the aftermath of an ice age thousands of years into the future that has eradicated the entirety of life in the northern hemisphere. Her protagonists, long since confined to the other side of the globe, embark upon a journey into this now desolate terrain but they are at a loss with the cultural remnants of former Europe; they have no grounding in its decayed artifacts and buried cities. Fully aware that the more dependent our culture becomes on increasingly complex devices, the more susceptible it is to a sudden and terminal collapse, Lessing urges us to take pause and to reconsider the capacity of our language and cultural systems to proffer knowledge to those outside of our immediate public.

In relation to Doris Lessing, it is fruitful to explore how conferences can become catalysts of new forms of knowledge production. Tomorrow’s conferences could, for example, be less about documenting informed perspectives and more about producing reality. Last year the Serpentine Gallery hosted two Interview Marathons in the Pavilion designed by Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond with Arup. Koolhaas was keen to build an “architecture of content,” and for the Pavilion to be conceived with attention to the conversations, discussions and events that take place within it. The Marathons were the natural extension of this vision: the first was a 24-hour event in which Rem and I interviewed 70 candidates to create a discursive portrait of present-day London; the second lasted 12 hours and was themed around the topic of art, power and money. The Marathons address the possibility or the impossibility of a synthetic image of the city, or of the contemporary art world, and attempt to map these issues in terms of both the visible and invisible. In this way they reference radical experimental models in visual art, architecture, literature and music and offer ways of connecting them.

I believe it is imperative to comprehend such visions if we aspire to a better understanding of tomorrow. And as Douglas Gordon says, “It has only just begun.”

list compiled by Hans Ulrich Obrist The future will be chrome. Rirkrit Tiravanija; The future will be curved. Olafur Eliasson; The future will be “in the name of the future.” Anri Sala; The future will be so subjective. Tino Sehgal; The future will be bouclette. Douglas Gordon; The future will be curious. Nico Dockx; The future will be obsolete. Tacita Dean; The future will be asymmetric. Pedro Reyes; The future will be a slap in the face. Cao Fei; The future will be delayed. Loris Greaud; The future does not exist but in snapshots. Philippe Parreno; The future will be tropical. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster; Future? … you must be mistaken. Trisha Donnelly; The future will be overgrown and decayed. Simryn Gill; The future will be tense. John Baldessari; Zukunft ist lecker. Hans-Peter Feldmann; Zukunft ist wichtiger als Freizeit.

Helmut Kohl (proposed by Carsten Höller); A future fuelled by human waste. Matthew Barney; The future is going nowhere without us. Paul Chan; The future is now – the future is it. Doug Aitken; The future is one night, just look up. Tomas Saraceno; The future will be a remake … Didier Fiuza Faustino; The future is what we construct from what we remember of the past – the present is the time of instantaneous revelation. Lawrence Weiner; The future is this place at a different time. Bruce Sterling; The future will be widely reproduced and distributed. Cory Doctorow; The future will be whatever we make it. Jacque Fresco; The future will involve splendor and poverty. Arto Lindsay; The future is uncertain because it will be what we make it. Immanuel Wallerstein; The future is waiting – the future will be self-organized. Raqs Media Collective; Dum spero: While I breathe, I hope. Nancy Spero; This is not the future.

Jordan Wolfson; The future is a dog. / L’avenir c’est la femme. Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron; On its way; it was here yesterday. Hreinn Friðfinnsson; The future will be an armchair strategist; the future will be like no snow on the broken bridge. Yang Fudong; The future always flies in under the radar. Martha Rosler; Suture that future.

Peter Doig; “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” (Shakespeare) Richard Hamilton; The future is overrated.

Cerith Wyn Evans; futuro = $B!g(B. Hector Zamorra; The future is a large pharmacy with a memory deficit. David Askevold; The future will be bamboo. Tay Kheng Soon; The future will be ousss. Koo Jeong-A; The future will be … grains, particles & bits. The future will be … ripples, waves & flow. The future will be … mix, swarms, multitudes.

The future will be … the future we deserve but with some surprises, if only some of us take notice. Vito Acconci; In the future … the earth as a weapon … Allora & Calzadilla; The future is our excuse. Joseph Grigely and Amy Vogel;

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The future will be repeated. Marlene Dumas; OK, OK I’ll tell you about the future; but I am very busy right now; give me a couple of days more to finish some things and I’ll get back to you. Jimmie Durham; Future is instant. Yung Ho Chang; “The future is not.” Zaha Hadid; The future is private. Anton Vidokle; The future will be layered and inconsistent. Liam Gillick; The future is a piano wire in a pussy powering something important. Matthew Ronay; In the future perhaps there will be no past. Daniel Birnbaum; The future was. Julieta Aranda; The future is menace.

Carolee Schneemann; The future is a forget-me-not. Molly Nesbit; The future is a knowing exchange of glances.

Sarah Morris; The future: Scratching on things I could disavow. Walid Raad; The future is our own wishful thinking.

Liu Ding; Le futur est un étoilement. Edouard Glissant; The future is now. Maurizio Cattelan; The future has a silver lining. Thomas Demand; The future is now and here. Yona Friedman; is a fax best to use as facsimile G&G FAX is: THE FUTURE? SEE YOU THERE! AS ARTISTS WE WANT TO HELP TO FORM OUR TOMORROWS. WE HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED IN THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. IT’S GOING TO BE MARVELLOUS. LONG LIVE THE FUTURE WITH LOTS OF LOVE ALWAYS AND ALWAYS. Gilbert&George; The future is without you.

Damien Hirst; The future is a season. Pierre Huyghe; The future is a poster. M/M; We have repeated the future out of existence. Tom McCarthy; The future has two large beautiful eyes. Jonas Mekas; less, few tours in my future Stefano Boeri; Future is what it is. Huang Yong Ping; The future is the very few years we have remaining before all time becomes one time. Grant Morrison; FUTURE MUST BE HERE TODAY. Jan Kaplicky; Future is more freedom.

Jia Zhangke; My art is very free, I don’t know what to do in the future. But I am positive. Xu Zhen; The future is inside. Shumon Basar, Markus Miessen, Åbäke; NO FUTURE – PUNK IS NOT DEATH! Thomas Hirschhorn; The future will be grim if we don’t do something about it. Morgan Fisher; The future will be hot! Jonas Ridderstråle

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OU NING

Born 1969 in Guangzhou, China, lives and works in Beijing, China As an editor and a graphic designer, Ou Ning is perhaps best known for his seminal book New Sound of Beijing (1999) which helped define the capital’s emerging rock scene, and the experimental magazine Bie Ce (2000–2006) he edited and designed for Modern Media Group. As a curator, he founded the large-scale touring biennale Get It Louder (2005, 2007) and organized the sound project at Battersea Power Station, London, in 2006 for the Serpentine Gallery, London, which then showed at Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo.

As an artist, he has organized such urban research and documentation projects as San Yuan Li, shown at the 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003); MoMA, New York (2004); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2005); Mori Museum, Tokyo (2005); House of World Culture, Berlin (2006) and more recently Da Zha Lan, sponsored by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, showed at NAi, Rotterdam (2006); ZKM, Karlsruhe (2006); University of Toronto (2006); MoMA, New York (2006); San Francisco Art Institute (2007); 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007). He is a writer, blogger and lecturer. He is also the founder of U-thèque, an independent film and video organization, and Alternative Archive, a platform for alternative cultural activities.

For Art & Entrepreneurship Ou Ning looks at Asia from a European standpoint, at the era of so-called “globalization”, which we are living in today, and the impact of it all on the art world.

REWRITING ASIA: THE GLOBAL IDENTITY OF CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART Standing at Antrepo No. 3, the main venue of the 10th Istanbul Biennial, looking across the Bosporus Strait forming the boundary between Europe and Asia, I was able to look at Asia for the first time from a European standpoint.

My line of sight moved quickly beyond the rows upon rows of buildings on the Asian side of Istanbul, and went onto the map in my mind. It flew rapidly over the territory of Turkey, past Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, got to China where I am from, and finally reached the Korean Peninsula and Japan. All this vast expanse of land that unfolded in my mind’s eye is the so-called “East” for Westerners. It can be subdivided further into the Near East, Middle East and Far East, according to its distance from Europe. For Chinese people like me, even though we are familiar with modern geographical knowledge that has been built up

by Europeans through navigation and mapping, we still tend to consider the concept of “the East” as a synonym for China only, while ignoring other Asian countries. It is related to the fact that China has always regarded itself as a great power, the center of the world, but it is also because we haven’t had many opportunities to leave our own land, and to travel to other countries. It is interesting that, for many Europeans, “the East” often means Turkey, the country that is nearest to them; in particular, a city with unique cultures like Istanbul represents the perfect embodiment of “the East” in their imagination. From Gustave Flaubert, Alphonse de Lamartine, Gerard de Nerval to Le Corbusier: they all shared the same fascination1.

This experiential and cognitive blind spot is due to the limitations of the times. In premodern societies, the high costs of and the social standing necessary for long-distance trips made traveling accessible only to a select few; therefore, we were unable to send ourselves to far-flung countries to experience the cultures of Others. In addition to the geographical barriers, obstacles in the form of political systems, languages, cultures and living habits also confined our experiences and knowledge to a rather narrow scope. We have all been tightly stuck in the finite space-time of the local, and have suffered the distances between one another; fortunately, these distances have also safeguarded the differences between countries and regions. Yet now, “all that is solid melts into air,”2 physical distances that were originally thought to be objective and unshakable have been surmounted by the astonishing speed invented in our era (high costs are no longer necessary to attain this speed), new technologies and the internet have started to offer the magic of high-speed compression of time and space, and geographical frontiers have started to disappear. An enormous amount of floating capital has broken through every political rampart and cultural barrier, in search of new places to increase profit in different regions around the world. In the name of eradicating poverty, it tries to get rid of all differences, and is even starting to shake the foundation of national governance, by reducing the political power of a country to “a mere security apparatus.”3 The sense of belonging to a nation-state that people used to have is becoming increasingly weaker as transnational travel and economic and cultural exchanges become more frequent. Nationalism is regarded as a feeling that doesn’t fit the time, while people are starting to construct a new identity based on the city (or more precisely, the district in the city) where they live. This is the era of so-called “globalization,” which we are living in today.

In an era like this, “mobility climbs to the rank of the uppermost of coveted values, and the freedom to move, perpetually a scarce and unequally distributed commodity, fast becomes the main stratifying factor of our late modern or postmodern times.”4 This new value and stratifying criterion has been determined by transnational capital which, by nature, tends to be nomadic, because it is the real ruler of this world; it has stirred up the world, and turned its own characteristic – mobility – into a universal principle. Artists are undoubtedly one of the social classes that possesses more freedom to move in this era. After the end of the Cold War, the former pattern of competition between groups of nations started to make place for competition between cities. Cities not only compete to host top international events such as the Olympic Games and the World Expos, but also vie with each other for international capital and tourism with the organization of all sorts of cultural and artistic festivals and exhibitions, and by these, seek to further enhance the economic power of and people’s identification with the city. The proliferation of international art biennials is the epitome of this competition. It has created a great deal of opportunities for transnational travel, and has enabled different cultures to look at each other and to change. For instance, it is because I had been invited to participate in the Istanbul Biennial that, as a result of geographical and cultural displacements, I had the opportunity to get a different viewpoint of the place I am from, to contemplate Asia, the so-called “East” for Westerners, in a new light.

Undoubtedly, all modern experiences and pedigrees of knowledge that we share today are mainly Western (in particular, European); Asia and other regions haven’t yet played much of a role in the historical process of the construction of global modernity. In the Western-centric eyes, Asia (the East) has always been the far-flung Other, the

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object of colonization, the cultural imagination of the West at the other end of the earth, and a reference that the West from time to time has recourse to based on its own discursive need. This long-standing attribute of the Other has resulted in Asian anxiety. It was present throughout nearly a century of Asian history, as Asia lived through changes and turbulences from the end of the nineteenth century onwards – the successive collapse of feudal monarchies, the continuous expansion of colonialism, the arduous establishment of modern nation-states, etc. Take the two Eastern empires, China and Turkey, for example, which almost coincided and shared astonishing similarities in the process of looking for their own modernity: the Chinese Qing dynasty and the Turkish Ottoman dynasty fell at about the same time, and Sun Yat-sen and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk emerged at roughly the same moment; both people were firm advocates of westernization, were deeply worried for their chronically weak countries, and in order to learn from the West and to catch up with it, they established a republican regime in their own country. The difference between these two countries is that, in the wave of globalization of today, Turkey is still eager to “leave Asia and join Europe”5, to throw itself into the embrace of the European Union; on the other hand, after having experienced the collapse of the communist value system around the world, China still adheres to centralization, and is becoming stronger and stronger in the global economic framework with authoritarian capitalism that is proper to Asia.

Asian politicians have also made similar alliance-forming attempts. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), founded in 1967, implemented the ASEAN Free Trade Area in 2003, with the hope of creating the ASEAN economic community, so as to enhance the competitiveness of the region; the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), founded in 1989, is an economic cooperation project that involves even more Asian countries and regions.

These alliance-forming efforts reflect the enthusiastic embracing of global economic integration by Asian countries.

However, it is a pity that they remain content simply with collaborations in the economic realm, and haven’t gone beyond that to form common “Asian values” on political and cultural levels. Singapore’s former leader Lee Kwan Yew, who is familiar with Western culture, fervently pleaded in favor of the construction of “Asian values”. He believed that this was the only effective way for Asian countries to avoid and resist the risks arising from their integration into the globalization process. However, the “Asian values” formulated by Mr. Lee only concerned such Confucian values as blood relations, family ties, fair hierarchy, the importance of authority, frugality, manners and protocol, etc. Although these values are shared by countries within the Confucian cultural circle, such as China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc, they fail to embrace Islamic and Hindu values. Due to the fact that Asia represents a rich diversity of races, cultures and religions, that each country is at a different stage of development, and that some countries still hold profound historical grudges against others, Asia has not been able to contend with the West by forming a highly integrated political, economic and cultural community that goes beyond national forms, like the European Union.

In the cultural realm, contemporary Asian art has gradually emerged over the past twenty years, but has largely relied on the predominance of the West, and to a great extent, it has benefited from the prevalence of globalization and multiculturalism in the Western world. In the late eighties and the early nineties of the last century, along with the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the USSR, the ideological opposition between the two camps came to an end. After having won its final victory, capitalism went further in its advance across the world by speeding up its pace and increasing its intensity, thereby inaugurating the movement of globalization. The

political iron curtain having been torn open, not only could Western capital enter the once antagonistic third world countries, but the art of third world countries could also be brought to the West. In 1993, in an article entitled “Clash of Civilizations” published in the American Foreign Affairs quarterly, Samuel P. Huntington argued that in the post-Cold War world, the principal conflicts of global politics would occur between different civilizations, that the Confucian civilization in Asia and the Islamic civilization, in particular, would represent the most serious challenges to Western civilization. This argument has sparked a sense of crisis in Western civilization, and has further helped to turn multiculturalism into the widespread “political correctness” in the West and the adoption of the cultures of the Other into a key strategy for the reconciliation of conflicts between civilizations. France was the first Western country to bring in contemporary Asian art: after the large-scale Le Japon des avant gardes: 1910–1970 show in 1986, the Pompidou Center organized Les magiciens de la terre in 1989 which, apart from showing a great number of contemporary African artists, presented works of contemporary Chinese artists for the first time in Europe. From then on, contemporary Asian art has frequently appeared in various important museums and biennials in the West.

In the course of the first post-Cold War decade, the exhibition of contemporary Asian art by the West still followed, to a certain extent, Cold War thinking, that is, it preferred works that were ironic about local politics and identified with capitalism and global values, using them as evidence for the victory of the West. After 9/11, when it experienced a lasting sense of shock and fear, the Western world has further adhered to Huntington’s prophetic theory of a clash of civilizations. The strong sense of defeat has magnified the image of the Other coming from the other side of the world; it has never been this clear and near, and is ever-present in all aspects of everyday life.

With his Enemy Kitchen project (2006), the Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz, who was born in New York and currently lives and works in Chicago, offered the young generation of America an opportunity to learn Iraqi cooking in a kitchen as a way of making sense of the “enemy” of the country. This work shows that the desire of people to understand other civilizations on the planet is becoming increasingly concrete. In the new millennium, the argument that globalization will inevitably result in cultural convergence is being reconsidered; the concept of “the other” that smacks of egocentrism is greatly losing effectiveness. In the meantime, as the economies of many Asian countries continue to grow, cultural coherence is being strengthened; regional group shows, exchanges and collaborations in contemporary art are becoming more and more frequent; artists of new generations are constantly emerging, and their psychological distance with the West is continually being reduced. All this results in a drastic change in the global art scene.

If “Asian values” remain hung in the balance under the efforts of politicians, what about the attempts made by the artists? In the era of globalization, are they also trying to create an Asian identity in the artistic landscape? Wong Hoy Cheong is a Chinese-Malaysian artist with a strong Asian consciousness. Since 1993, he has created a whole series of works to focus on issues of colonial history, political conflicts, immigrant identity and family traditions in Asian regions. As a fifth-generation Chinese immigrant in Malaysia, Wong Hoy Cheong was born in George Town; his mother tongue is Hokkien, but he received a British colonial education and then went to study in the United States. He speaks Chinese, Malay and English: he is himself a product of Asia’s diverse histories and cultures.

Consequently, his early works showed typical traits of “Asian-ness” through the exploration of personal memories and

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family histories. For the Kwangju Biennale in 2000, his project consisted in collecting a great number of books on Asian history, and after burning them, reforming the pulp into paper tiles to pave the floor in the exhibition space, thus allowing the audience to step on different versions of Asian history and to discern blurred images of those political figures who had once influenced the fate of Asia. The construction of all identities has to rely on history; only history can define who you are, where you are from, and where you are going. In terms of the exploitation and utilization of historical resources, artists are more effective than politicians, because they always speak from a personal position, and place great stress on experiences; consequently, they are more likely to make people identity with them.

For his participation in the 10th Istanbul Biennial, Wong Hoy Cheong focused on the historical district of Sulukule in the center of Istanbul. Sulukule is the oldest existent Romany district in the world: gypsies have come here since 1000 AD and have offered entertainment to this city with music, circus, story-telling, fortune-telling, etc; however, the Romany are now being confronted with the destruction of the district and are being asked to move out. Wong Hoy Cheong gave cameras and camcorders to children of Sulukule and taught them the basics of filming, allowing them to express their memories, knowledge and imagination of this district; by doing so, he has tried to make an appeal for the protection of this district. Sulukule greatly resembles the Dazhalan district near Tiananmen Square in Beijing: they both have a long history, but gradually fell into oblivion during the process of searching for and development of new spaces of the city, and plunged into decline before turning into slums in the end; now they are going to be entirely wiped off the landscape.6 The fate of these historical districts is intertwined with the fight of different interest groups for space to survive in the era of globalization, and implies the clashes between the two cultural forces of convergence and differentiation. The disadvantaged slum population is not only the manifestation of social stratification caused by floating capital but is also a metaphor for the desperate conditions of local cultures in their confrontation with strong global cultures. For those artists who refuse to be reduced to a component of the homogeneous culture of globalization, to stand up for history is the key to the preservation of local differences and the construction of local identities.

Similar efforts are also seen in the works by the Vietnamese artist Jun Nguyen Hatsushiba. For the Yokohama Triennial in 2001, after his original intention to create a cyclo (cycle rickshaw) museum had been compromised due to a shortage of space, he invited Vietnamese fishermen from Nha Trang to pull cyclos in the water, and made a video film of it for the exhibition. As the oldest and principal means of transport in Vietnam, cyclos embody the life memories of the Vietnamese people. However, they now may have to fight for the right to survive against the global city transportation system that is synonymous with efficiency and order – the image of cyclos moving forward with difficulty under the sea, is “a striking metaphor for struggle and survival” 7. In comparison with the convergence of imagination, the impulse for differentiation they have aroused seems to become reality in a more widespread manner. Objectively speaking, homogeneity is a partial concept of globalization, whereas difference is its essentially profound characteristic. We have already seen that, with the progress of globalization, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer: “signaling a new freedom for some, upon many others it descends as an uninvited and cruel fate,” 8 and that instead of being rejected with contempt and disappearing from the world, nationalism is gaining ground day by day. Although most artists are reluctant to attach a national label to their identity or works,

it is hard for them to go beyond their personal growth experiences, historical imprints, and linguistic and thinking sets. Difference is the essence of this world, and cannot be obliterated or altered by any capital-related, political or other man-made force.

Consequently, regardless of its content or subject matter, or the medium it uses, we can always perceive a distinguishable trait of “Asian-ness” in a work by a contemporary Asian artist – this characteristic is sometimes consciously performed by the artist, but sometimes goes beyond his or her intentions. Recently, Jun Nguyen Hatsushiba started a project series entitled “Breathing is Free: 12756.3.” The artist intends to run the physical distance of 12756.3 km, the diameter of the earth, in different parts of the world within a certain period of time, and have the whole process filmed by others. This time, he won’t hire any actors, but “will be the one to move and struggle” 9 himself, to measure and experience the distance of the earth with his own body. In this project, the idea of using the body as an artistic medium is different from that of many Western artists: here, the body is not to be stripped bare or to be displayed, it is not used to challenge taboos, either; instead, it is the vehicle through which the artist aims to train his will, it is the arena where spirit confronts material. This penance-like artistic practice has also been undertaken by other Asian artists: The US-based Taiwan artist The-ching Hsieh carried out a series of one-year performances in New York in the seventies and eighties, for instance, living in a cage for one year, punching a time clock every hour for one year, living outdoors for one year, etc. Chinese artist He Yunchang picked up a rock in a small town called Boulmer on the Northumberland coast in northern England, and carried it all the way around the coast of Great Britain and finally went back to Boulmer to put the rock back in the same place. Besides using the body as a medium, the biggest characteristic of these works is to show meaning through meaningless behavior, showing typical Asian thinking.

Nevertheless, just like the way that political practices have failed to reach unified “Asian values,” the global identity that contemporary Asian art has tried to construct is also fragmentary; even the most brilliant observer is unable to sum up a complete attribute suitable for every Asian country. Maybe we can say that fragmentation is in itself an appropriate image for Asia (like its geography), because as a matter of fact, its diversity fits in with the formula of energy production in the globalization era. No matter which description we use, today’s Asia has certainly opened up a road of modernity that is different from that of the West, and on the negotiating table among global powers, it is no longer an irrelevant other; and people can no longer neglect the voice it has. Asia is no longer the orphan of the world, the progress it has accomplished today cannot be compared with the past: it is the moment to rewrite history.

Translated from Chinese by Yu Hsiao-Hwei, Paris

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Notes: 1

In his Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk quotes a great deal of the travel notes on Istanbul of these French writers and poets and their impressions of “the East”. Le Corbusier is the author of Le Voyage d’Orient.

2

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto.

3

Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of Mexico’s Zapatista rebels, wrote in the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique (pp. 4–5, August, 1997): “In the cabaret of globalization, the state performs a striptease, at the end of which it is left wearing the minimum necessary: its powers of repression. With its material base destroyed, its sovereignty and independence abolished, and its political class eradicated, the nation state increasingly becomes a mere security apparatus in the service of the mega-enterprises...”

4

Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: the Human Consequences, Chinese translation “quanqiuhua: renlei de houguo”, The Commercial Press, 2001, p. 3.

5

Turkey has submitted an application to join the European Union since 1987, but up to today, its candidacy has still not been accepted. The idea of “leaving Asia and joining Europe” had already been put forward by the Japanese Fukuzawa Yukichi during the Meiji period.

6

The Dazhalan project that Cao Fei and I collaborated on also took part in this Istanbul Biennial. For more on this project, please visit: www.dazhalan-project.org

7

Jonathan Napack: Vietnam’s Artists Try to Break Free of Their “Velvet Prison”, The International Herald Tribune, June 9, 2005.

8

Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: the Human Consequences, Chinese translation, The Commercial Press, 2001, p. 71.

9

Uda Motoko: Interview with Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, ARTiT, Summer/Fall, 2007.

INDEX 222 223

INDEX

IMAGE INDEX

222

INDEX 224 225

ALLORA & CALZADILLA Untitled P.16

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MICHAEL BAUER F/M Scorben P.20

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MICHAEL BAUER B/M YLMAZ – UHOS P.22

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MICHAEL BAUER Fjorkboy P.24

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HEMAN CHONG We Have A Vision For Tomorrow: A brief encounter with government policies in science fiction circa 1968 P.26

HEMAN CHONG Eighty-Eight Knowledge Grids: Exploring the archive as architecture P.27

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PLAMEN DEJANOFF Dog P.35

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HEMAN CHONG Common Sense About Networks: Hostile post-apocalyptic worlds and community-building P.28

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PLAMEN DEJANOFF New Works (Pinocchio) P.37

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HEMAN CHONG New Member In The Family: Ethics and values regarding clones and robots P.29

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LATIFA ECHAKHCH Untitled (Zellig), Ochre, Red, Blue, Black P.38

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HEMAN CHONG Social Responsibility In The Year 2050: Investigating the possibilities for sustainable multicultural societies P.30

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P.46

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CAO FEI i.Mirror by China Tracy (aka: Cao Fei) P.48

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NICOLA GOBBETTO Boys & Girls P.51

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GONZALEZ & RUSSOM The 4th way P.54

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FABIAN MARTI I Wonder What Life Will Be P.60

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FABIAN MARTI A Life That Lasts Eternally P.61

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TZU NYEN HO Google Image Search_Vision P.64

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TZU NYEN HO Google Image Search_Knowledge P.66

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TZU NYEN HO Google Image Search_Social Responsibility P.67

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LATIFA ECHAKHCH Fantasia (Empty Flag) Corner 5x3 P.42

P.46

CAO FEI i.Mirror by China Tracy (aka: Cao Fei)

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PLAMEN DEJANOFF Clown P.33

CAO FEI i.Mirror by China Tracy (aka: Cao Fei)

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CAO FEI i.Mirror by China Tracy (aka: Cao Fei) P.44

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TZU NYEN HO Google Image Search_Network P.68

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TZU NYEN HO Google Image Search_Family P.69

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MAMIKO OTSUBO Milkyway P.70

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MAMIKO OTSUBO Stars P.72

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MAMIKO OTSUBO Value Pak P.73

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INDEX 226 227

MAMIKO OTSUBO Untitled (medium) P.75

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PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN Hope P.84

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ANDRÉ PRETORIUS A Bird in the Hand P.96

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ESTER PARTEGÀS Experience Life P.76

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MAI-THU PERRET No More City P.89

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DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY Walker in the Trees P.98

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ESTER PARTEGÀS Millions Can’t Relax P.78

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MAI-THU PERRET Untitled P.91

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DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY Dante’s Peak P.100

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ESTER PARTEGÀS Was It Love P.80

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ANDRÉ PRETORIUS A Bird in the Hand P.92

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DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY Blue Eyes P.102

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PAVEL PEPPERSTEIN Basis P.82

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P.107

ANDRÉ PRETORIUS A Bird in the Hand P.94

MATTHEW SMITH Duvet with Stand No. 7

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MATTHEW SMITH Untitled P.105

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MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS As Used P.120

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MATTHEW SMITH Untitled P.109

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THUKRAL & TAGRA Metropolis – 2 P.110

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MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS As Found P.116

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MIESSEN & PLOUGHFIELDS As Applied P.118

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DISCLAIMER AND SOURCES The information in the section Entrepreneurship – Past and Present is based on Dr. Joseph Jung’s book “Alfred Escher (1819–1882) Aufstieg, Macht, Tragik”, 2007.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT Credit Suisse would like to express its particular gratitude to the artists for their enthusiasm in developing new work for this project.

We also wish to thank the individuals who supported us and helped bring the project to life: Cristian Alexa, Murielle de Preux, Giangi Fonti, Louise Hayward, Elisabeth Kaufmann, Peter Kilchmann, Karolina Dankow, Peter Nagy, Francesca Pia, Annemarie Reichen, Shea Spencer, Scott Zieher.

All rights of Credit Suisse, the artists and the authors are reserved. This work and parts thereof are subject to copyright. This work may not be reproduced or copied, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means (graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording) without the prior written permission of the publisher. © 2008 CREDIT SUISSE, the artists, the authors

PUBLISHING DETAILS PUBLISHER CREDIT SUISSE EDITORIAL TEAM Peter Angehrn, Credit Suisse Bastian Lossen, Credit Suisse Punleuk Kam, Credit Suisse Tanja Eigenmann, Credit Suisse CURATION & EDITORIAL CONCEPT Michelle Nicol, glamour engineeringTM, Zurich Marina Leuenberger (assistance), glamour engineeringTM, Zurich AUTHORS Michelle Nicol, glamour engineeringTM, Zurich Ou Ning, artist, filmmaker and researcher, Beijing Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, Serpentine Gallery, London DESIGN & LAYOUT erdmannpeisker, Biel PHOTOGRAPHY Rainer Wolfsberger, Zurich LITHOGRAPHY Marco Serena, Zurich

COPY EDITING Textcontrol, Zurich PRINT Neidhart + Schรถn Group AG, Zurich BOOKBINDING Buchbinderei Burkhardt AG, Mรถnchaltorf PRINTED 2008 IN SWITZERLAND

SOLE 62 2513614 1,2008

TRANSLATION Catherine Schelbert, Zurich Jeremy Gaines, Frankfurt

LOREM IPSUM 234 235