LAURA LIMA – PLAYFUL GEOMETRY
18.9. – 9.1.22

Laura Lima's installation Bar Restaurant (2010) in dialogue with works by Valentin Carron, Sylvie Fleury, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, and Olivier Mosset from the collection of the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst.

Geometric shapes as bodies in three dimensions, as objects on the wall, painted on canvases, or in the form of found everyday objects: the exhibition Playful Geometry gathers works from the collection that present variations on a geometric core vocabulary. lts centerpiece is the Brazilian artist Laura Lima's (b. 1971) installation Bar Restaurant (2010) , which is activated by a performance component. Taking a playful approach, Lima seats objects that come with different art-historical references at tables and serves them a round of beers.

Conspicuously many of the guests are geometric bodies such as spheres, cubes, and cylinders, whose glasses, once empty, are refilled by an attentive individual appearing in the role of server. Lima creates an experimental arrangement that probes the space between reality and illusion and offers a humorous challenge to the art-historical canon. The multifaceted work is presented in dialogue with selected pieces from the collection distinguished by certain aspects that invite associative connections to Bar Restaurant.

The register of geometric abstraction provides the basis for this encounter. Other aspects in which the works evince similarities include strategies of reference to the history of art and appropriation as well as the humorous and parodic reinterpretation of quotations.