Collection on Display
Phyllida Barlow, Jimmie Durham, Daniel Knorr, Mark Leckey

With the renovation of the Löwenbräukunst-Areal, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartkunst finally has a permanent framework for the presentation of its collection: a spacious exhibition floor will host temporary shows offering insight into different aspects of the museum’s holdings. The first three presentations from the collection are dedicated to contemporary work in sculpture. Selected works illustrate multifaceted and dynamic developments and the growing dissolution of the boundaries that conventionally define sculpture. The first chapter features works by Phyllida Barlow, Jimmie Durham, Daniel Knorr, and Mark Leckey.

In recent years, issues of sculpture have been a major focus of the exhibition programming at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst and the museum’s efforts to enlarge its collection. The three-part presentation of works from the collection brings together works that raise questions concerning the possibilities of sculptural production. As a genre, sculpture—whether figural or abstract—occupied a central position in the history of art from the classical age to the modernist era. As the art historian Rosalind Krauss has argued, since the onset of postmodernism, the conception of sculpture has been expanded as its boundaries have become blurry—sculpture has quite literally been knocked off its pedestal. Sculptural work extended into a variety of media and materials, exploring the possibilities of space.