CALDER NOW: ALEXANDER CALDER’S LAST AND UNMISTAKABLE INFLUENCE ON CONTEMPORARY ART
On November 21, the group exhibition Calder Now opens at the Kunsthal Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. Curated by Dieter Buchhart, Anna Karina Hofbauer and the Calder Foundation, the show explores master sculptor Alexander Calder’s enduring and unmistakable influence on contemporary art, placing over twenty of his sculptures alongside works by ten prominent artists: Olafur Eliasson, Žilvinas Kempinas, Simone Leigh, Ernesto Neto, Carsten Nicolai, Aki Sasamoto, Roman Signer, Monika Sosnowska, Sarah Sze and Rirkrit Tiravanija. The show remains on view until May 2022.
Alexander Calder (United States, 1898-1976) instigated many revolutionary artistic innovations. In his quest to move beyond the three spatial dimensions—making the fourth dimension of time a prominent and indispensable element of his work—Calder succeeded in transforming the contemporary understanding of sculpture. He was the first to remove sculpture from its pedestal, suspending it in mid-air. With his dynamic mobiles that were able to move freely in space, he was one of the initiators—alongside artists such as Marcel Duchamp and László Moholy-Nagy—of the kinetic art movement that revolutionized the static nature of art at the beginning of the twentieth century. Calder became a source of inspiration for subsequent generations of artists.
The ten international artists in ‘Calder Now’ show pieces that could not have existed without the precedence of various innovative aspects from Calder’s visionary body of work. The exhibition leads the visitor through a multisensory experience.Olafur Eliasson, for instance, uses natural phenomena such as light to explore perception. Simone Leigh tells stories about the American history of slavery through the media of humble materials. And Monika Sosnowska transforms architectural materials into unexpected, gravity-defying sculptures, creating new visual connections between her art and the exhibition space. 2007 Calder Prize laureate Žilvinas Kempinas, whose sculptures are at the intersection of installation and kinetic art, will debut a new piece for ‘Calder Now’. Similarly, Aki Sasamoto will create a new performance work especially for the exhibition during her residency at Atelier Calder, which operates out of Calder’s home and studio in Saché, France. The exhibition shows how Calder’s legacy continues to inspire and inform contemporary practice fifty years after the artist’s death. These groundbreaking artists invite new conversations and interpretations of his oeuvre.
SERVICE
Dates: 11.21.2021 – 05.29.2022 / tuesday to sunday – 10am – 5pm
Where: Kunsthal – Museumpark, Westzeedijk 341 -3015 AA Rotterdam, Netherlands