PRESS KIT

PRESS KITLausanne, June 2013

WOULD YOU LIKE A BAG WITH THAT ?PLASTIC BAGS IN ART AND DESIGN19 June – 6 October 2013

PRESS CONFERENCE: TUESDAY 18 JUNE AT 11 AMIN THE PRESENCE OF SUSANNA KUMSCHICK AND IDA-MARIE CORELL, CURATORS, AND DESIGNERS AND ARTISTS OF THE EXHIBITION

MEDIA CONTACTDanaé Panchaud, public relations+41 21 315 25 27, danae.panchaud@lausanne.chVisuals available on www.mudac.ch/press (login: presse2013/images2013)

TABLE OF CONTENTPress release p. 3-4Selected projects and workd p. 5-10Practical information p. 11Available visuals p. 12-13

Los Superheroes, plastic bags for toys

3

WOULD YOU LIKE A BAG WITH THAT ?PLASTIC BAGS IN ART AND DESIGN19 June – 6 October 2013

Omnipresent and international, used once and discarded to linger in the environment forever, the plastic bag is the ultimate symbol of our globalised society. It has now earned its place in a museum. The exhibition Would You Like a Bag With That? Plastic bags in art and design juxtaposes stories of everyday life and customs with contemporary art and design, to sometimes thought-provoking effect. Comprising around thirty works by international artists and designers, the exhibition reflects current concerns and highlights some of the problems raised by the use of plastic bags.

Cult object or garbage, revered or despised, the plastic bag divides and polarises opinion, and exposes our consu-merist behaviour. It reinforces our status and our identity, it degrades the environment, it is collected with love or through environmental consciousness, making it a topical theme in art as well as design. Would You Like A Bag With That? brings together international artists and designers for the first time in a multidisciplinary format, highli-ghting the history – or histories – of the plastic bag through the lens of culture, aesthetics and politics.

Works of art and design objects alike become commentaries on contemporary society, casting light on topical issues with the carrier bag as focus: ecology and recycling, our disposable culture, metamorphosis, design and craftsmanship, consumption and politics. Through installations, sculptures, photographs, paintings, objects and performances, the exhibition trains the spotlight of critical inquiry on this banal object that has become impossible to ignore.

The plastic bag is a major theme in the paintings of Marie-Claire Baldenweg, who since the 1970s has painted them consistently and skilfully, tackling social issues from a critical standpoint, sometimes subtly and ironically, other times head-on. They are echoed in Marx, a 24-carat gold-plated plastic bag by Baptiste Debombourg and David Marin, an impossible and fragile conflation of the world of luxury and the trivial, and Andreas Blank’s delicate ala-baster and marble sculpture. Many pieces play with the concept of deceptive appearances. Maude Schneider’s ceramic rubbish bags, for example, juxtapose a disposable item and a durable material.

In the photographs of Hendrik Kerstens and the collections of Jeremy Scott, the plastic bag is cleverly and ele-gantly transformed into a fashion accessory or an item of clothing; Verena Sieber-Fuchs uses it as the raw material for her jewellery.

Gregor Schneider’s famous installation Liegender Mann mit steifem Schwanz (2004) [Man With Cock] gives a very different role to the plastic bag. The man on the floor, half-covered in a black bin liner, hints at an oppressive undercurrent of existence where secret obsessions are brutally repressed. In another vein, Iskender Yediler offers a direct and provocative commentary with a cross made of carrier bags from the Aldi supermarket chain, inflated with a hair dryer.

The young artist Nils Völker explores the sculptural and acoustic potential of the plastic bag by creating an impressive auditory landscape; his wall installation is made of bags which appear to breathe. Claudia Borgna generates a proliferation of used bags outside the museum and in the stairwell, creating a poetic landscape as the changing weather is permitted to sculpt the raw materials. The cycle of nature, the stressful pace of our modern lifestyles and the plastic bag – a perfect symbol of its own inherent contradictions – are reflected in her ephemeral work.

In parallel, designers are increasingly turning their attention to this object. Lamps, poufs, bath mats and other furnishings created by the young Lausanne designer Anne-Cécile Rappa are made by a women’s association in Morocco. In the same vein, Ryan Frank of South Africa has designed a chair made of plastic bags, using weaving techniques that grew out of South Africa’s townships. These are all examples of recycling design inspired by time-honoured local craftsmanship and traditions.

4

The exhibition doesn’t stop at contemporary creation. It also showcases one-off pieces and complete collections of plastic bags that tell a story of culture and everyday life. Most of them come from private collections in Switzerland that have been painstakingly built up over the years. Often kept as a souvenir, they nevertheless tell a story; some have acquired the status of icons and works of art in their own right. Take the famous bag created by Joseph Beuys for the 1972 Documenta exhibition in Kassel, part of his installation Büro für direkte Demokratie durch Volksabstim-mung [Bureau for Direct Democracy through Referendum], a highly collectible bag for a jeans manufacturer bearing a picture of James Dean, the bag designed by E+U Hiestand for distribution group ABM, and the first plastic bag ever used at the Swiss department store Globus/Innovation, from the mid-60s.

Would you like a bag with that? also explores more down-to-earth subjects. The theme is tackled with humour in the series of dog waste bags from Europe which, despite their restrained graphics, are testimony to the boundless creativity of the manufacturers, and to a common contemporary paradox: why do we wrap biodegradable waste in polluting materials?

The exhibition is complemented by short films, comments and statements on environmental issues. It also asks how the materials might evolve in the future, and what the possible alternatives could be. A panel bringing together six specialists of the issue will take place on 25 June 2013. The panellists are: Edi Blatter, director of the SATOM, waste disposal company; Isabelle Chevalley, member of the National Council and the Great Council of Vaud, Vert’Libéral party; Pascal Hagmann, engineer and founder of Oceaneye, association studying ocean pollution by plastics; Frédéric Mauch, CEO and founder of BioApply, producer of biodegradable bags; Françoise Minarro, spokesperson, Greenpeace. The panel will be moderated by Lucile Solari, journalist and producer of Prise de Terre (RTS). The mudac produces on the occastion of this exhibition a biodegradable and compostable bag.

Would You Like A Bag With That? Plastic bags in art and design was conceived by Susanna Kumschick and Ida-Marie Corell for the Gewerbemuseum in Winterthur. Ida-Marie Corell is the author of a reference book about the topic of plastic bags, Alltagsobjekt Plastiktüte (Springer, 2011) that was significant for the conception of the exhi-bition. It was adapted for its presentation at the mudac with additional pieces by the designers and artists Hendrik Kerstens, Jeremy Scott, Maude Schneider, Léa Ricorday, Baptiste Debombourg et David Marin, Rada Boukova and Verena Sieber-Fuchs, among others.

ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS

Poklong Anading (*1975, Manila, Philippines); Marie-Claire Baldenweg (*1954, Australia & Switzerland); Iris van Bebber & Uwe Bülles (*1972/*1948, Germany); Biaugust CREATION OFFICE (Owen Chuang & Cloud Lu, Taipei, Taiwan); Andreas Blank (*1976, born in Germany, lives in London); Claudia Borgna (born in Hamburg, lives in Lon-don); Rada Boukova (*1973, born in Sofia, Bulgaria, lives in Paris); Brigitte Corell (*1948, Berlin); Ida-Marie Corell (*1984, Berlin & Vienna); Baptiste Debombourg and David Marin (France); Lauren DiCioccio (San Francisco); Ryan Frank (born in South Africa, lives in London); Lukas Julius Keijser (*1973, born in Holland, lives in Berlin); Hendrik Kerstens (*1956, Amsterdam); MyeongBeom Kim (Seoul, South Korea); Camila Labra Fontana (Las Condas San-tiago, Chile); Hanna Liden (*1976, born in Sweden, lives in New York); Simon Monk (*1966, England) ; Torsten Mühlbach (*1974, Munich); Sheila Odessey (New York); Anne-Cécile Rappa (*1984, born in France, lives in Lau-sanne) ; Dodi Reifenberg (*1960, born in Israel, lives in Berlin); Léa Ricorday (France) ; Gregor Schneider (*1969, Rheydt, Germany); Maude Schneider (*1980, Geneva); Jeremy Scott (*1974, Kansas City, Missouri); Verena Sie-ber-Fuchs (*1943, Zurich) ; Roald Sivertsen (*1981, Oslo); Lisa Tiemann (*1981, Berlin); Ruben Verdu (born in Venezuela, lives in Barcelona) ; Luzia Vogt (*1971, Basel); Nils Völker (*1979, Berlin); Iskender Yediler (*1953, born in Turkey, lives in Berlin).

Dog waste bags (Switzerland and Germany)

5

SELECTED PROJECTS AND WORKS

Maude Schneider, Garbage, 2011, installation, stoneware

Although they look for all the world like a pile of rubbish bags that you might see on a street corner, waiting to be collected and incinerated, these sculptures are made of ceramic, a durable and virtually indestructible material. The artist thus turns the spotlight on the problem of waste which, because we continue to produce it in ever-increasing quantities, has become a permanent and invasive presence in our daily lives, despite a global increase in awareness of the problem.

Baptiste Debombourg and David Marin, Marx, 2013, 24-carat gold-plated plastic bag

A plastic bag gilded with gold leaf: what appears to be a simple, if delicate, object, is revealed to be complex. It raises a number of paradoxes, being both a model of society itself, and an allegory of the consumer culture. Its materials are drawn from the worlds of poverty and luxury; a painstaking procedure requiring time and expertise is applied to a mass-produced object intended for quick and thoughtless use. Two materials that are essential to our society – gold and black gold, crude oil – are juxtaposed.

Andreas Blank, Untitled, 2011, sculpture, alabaster and marble

Carved from alabaster and mounted on a marble plinth, this otherwise banal and trivial object acquires unexpected aesthetic qualities and museum-piece status. It becomes imbued with a kind of monumental permanence.

6

Hendrik Kerstens, Bag, 2007, photograph

Hendrik Kerstens’ sole subject in his photography is his daughter Paula, whose life he documents. He sets up a dialogue tinged with humour, using the techniques of the Flemish masters (composition, light, pose) alongside trivial and resolutely contemporary accessories: bubble wrap, beach towels, rubbish bags or lampshades.

Jeremy Scott, Boudoir Bombshell collection, prêt-à-porter spring/summer 2011

Jeremy Scott borrows liberally from the lexicon of everyday life, street art and popular culture: unu-sual materials, day-glo colours, spoof logos. In his spring/summer 2011 collection, plastic bags be-come dresses, skirts and t-shirts.

Marie-Claire Baldenweg, Art Basel / Miami Beach, 2010, oil on canvas

Marie-Claire Baldenweg has painted plastic bags since the 1970s, setting up a dialogue between the patience and skill of working in oils, and the ephemeral use of plastic bags. Her work is a poli-tical statement, a critique of our consumer society; the enormous sums at stake in the contemporary art market make Art Basel a prime example.

7

The provocative and fiercely critical work of Gregor Schneider often exudes an oppressive and sinister atmosphere that can be uncomfortable for the viewer. This realistic sculpture of a man suffocated in a plastic bin liner remains ambiguous: it represents death and torture (particularly in the context of Guantanamo, which the artist has openly denounced), poverty, repression and morbid sexuality (the man has an erection and a spot of semen is visible on the plastic).

Gregor Schneider, Liegender Mann mit steifem Schwanz, 2004, installation

Iskender Yediler, ALDIPLUSLIDL, 1998, sculpture

Assembled in the shape of a cross, the plastic Lidl and Aldi bags from Germany’s two biggest supermar-ket chains become a trenchant cri-ticism of a society that has elevated consumption to a religion.

Ruben Verdu, Louis Vuitton Trash Bag, 2004, installation

With his bin liner bearing a Louis Vuitton monogram, Ruben Verdu provides an ironic commentary on the codes of luxury and waste, desire and disposal.

8

In a reaction to the built-in obsolescence of the objects that surround us, whether plastic bags or newspapers, Lauren DiCioccio embellishes fabric bags with delicate embroidery that replicates the shapes, the printing and the colours of plastic bags, adding to their intrinsic value and giving them a poetic dimension.

Lauren DiCioccio, Rose Thank You, 2010 and Thank You 5x, 2010, thread and organza

Verena Sieber-Fuchs, Hut im Grüngut, 2013, hat made of biodegradable bags

In line with her principle of using everyday ma-terials in unusual ways to make jewellery and accessories, Verena Sieber-Fuchs responded to the mudac’s invitation with a hat covered in delicate petals, cut out of biodegradable bags, that move gracefully with the wearer.

Claudia Borgna, Melting growth, growing melt, installation (8’000 plastic bags)

Claudia Borgna produces monumental, ephemeral installations that reflect her interest in landscape and her concern that our planet is filling up with waste. She creates new landscapes out of the derided but ubiquitous material of plastic bags, playing on both their fragility and, by virtue of their inexorable industrial production, their immortality. These spectacular installations are gradually transformed by the weather, taking on a life of their own. The cycle of nature, the stressful pace of our modern lifestyles and the plastic bag – a perfect symbol of its own inherent contradictions – are reflected in her ephemeral work.

9

Dodi Reifenberg, Untitled, 2011, installation

Dodi Reifenberg’s installation brings spectators into the centre of his work. Invited to rummage through a heap of plastic bags, they experience the plastic bag from the point of view of all those whose livelihoods depend on what they can salvage from the enormous open-air refuse tips found in many developing countries. It highlights the very different experience of plastic bags in the North and the South.

Anne-Cécile Rappa, Latifa, 2009, carpet, Bent, 2009, seat, Lazara, 2008, lamp

Designer Anne-Cécile Rappa, who is based in Lausanne, works with the Moroccan organisation Lalla Mika to make household objects out of recycled plastic bags.

10

PLASTIC BAGS COLLECTIONS

Joseph Beuys, Büro für direkte Demo-kratie durch Volksabstimmung, Docu-menta Kassel, 1972.Coll. Ida-Marie Corell

SO ?© Coll. Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Designsammlung. Zürcher Hochschule der Künste.

Jeans, 1985© Coll. Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Designsammlung. Zürcher Hochschule der Künste.

UniprixColl. Liliane Guinard. Photograh © Atelier de numérisation - Ville de Lausanne

Placette (Manor)Coll. Liliane Guinard. Photograh © Atelier de numérisation - Ville de Lausanne

Armée du SalutPrivate collection. Photograh © Atelier de numérisation - Ville de Lausanne

ManiakPrivate collection. Photograh © Atelier de numérisation - Ville de Lausanne

Niagara, fashion shop,1980’s© Coll. Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Designsammlung. Zürcher Hochschule der Künste.

Jet Set© Coll. Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Designsammlung. Zürcher Hochschule der Künste.

11

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Press conference Tuesday 18 June 2013 at 11 am

Opening Tuesday 18 June 2013 from 6 pm Performance by Ida-Marie Corell at 7 pm

Dates & hours 19 June – 6 October 2013 Tu-Su 11 am -18 pm. Open on Mondays in July and August and every bank holiday

Jeudi Design Panel: Le sac en plastique, et après? (in French) With Pascal Hagmann (Oceaneye), Frédéric Mauch (BioApply), Isabelle Chevalley

(Parti Vert’Libéral), Françoise Minarro (Greenpeace), Edi Blatter (SATOM). Moderation Lucile Solari (journalist and producer, RTS).

Tuesday 25 June at 7 pm. Registration mandatory (021 315 25 30 or info@mudac.ch)

Guided tours Tuesday 2 July 2013 at 12.15 and Saturday 7 September 2013 at 11 am

Education Le plastique, c’est pas fantastique! Children activity (8-13 year olds) Wednesdays 26 June and 24 July, 2-4 pm A la façon des maîtres hollandais. Children activity (8-13 year olds) Wednesdays 11 and 25 September, 2-4 pm Recycler, un bonheur pour les pieds! Family activity Sunday 15 September, Saturday 5 October and Sunday 6 October, 2-4.30 pm Fee: 10.- per participant. Mandatory registration at 021 315 25 30

Contact mudac – musée de design et d’arts appliqués contemporains Place de la Cathédrale 6 CH-1005 Lausanne t +41 315 25 30 / f +41 315 25 39 www.mudac.ch / info@mudac.ch

Media contact Danaé Panchaud, public relations t +41 21 315 25 27, danae.panchaud@lausanne.ch

12

Iskender Yediler, ALDIPLUSLIDL, 1998, plastic bags and hair-dryer. 260 x 230 x 45 cm © Iskender Yediler

Baptiste Debombourg and David Marin, Marx, 2013, 24-carat gold-plated plastic bag, 40 x 25 x 25cm. Courtesy Galerie Patricia Dorfmann, Paris

Marie-Claire Baldenweg, Art Basel/Miami Beach, 2010, oil on canvas, 160 x 160 cm. © Marie-Claire Baldenweg

Jeremy Scott, Boudoir Bombshell collection, prêt-à-porter spring/sum-mer 2011Photograph © Randy Brooke

Gregor Schneider, Liegender Mann mit steifem Schwanz, 2004, silicon, plastic bag, clothing, sperm. 200 x 75 x 35 cm© Gregor Schneider. Courtesy VG Bild-Kunst BonnRuben Verdu, Louis Vuitton Trash Bag,

2004, installation, serigraphy on plastic bag, 58 x 54 cm© Ruben Verdu

AVAILABLE VISUALSThe high-resolution images are available on www.mudac.ch/press with the login presse2013 / images2013.

Andreas Blank, Untitled, 2011, alabaster and marble, 96.5 x 40 x 32.5 cmPhotograph © Michael Lio

Hendrik Kerstens, Bag, 2007, photograph, 150 x 120 cm© Hendrik Kerstens. Courtesy Nunc-Contemporary, Antwerp

Maude Schneider, Garbage, 2011, instal-lation, stoneware, app. 160 x 110 x 75 cmPhotograph © Swann Thommen

13

Lauren DiCioccio, Rose Thank You, 2010 and Thank You 5x, 2010, thread and organzaCourtesy Jack Fischer Gallery

Verena Sieber-Fuchs, Hut im Grüngut, 2013, hat made of biodegradable bagsPhotograph © Atelier de numérisation - Ville de Lausanne

© Jörger-Stauss

Luzia Vogt, Sprüngli-Brosche, 2009, brooch, 4.8x3.8x3 cm. © Luzia Vogt

Anne-Cécile Rappa, Latifa, 2009, carpet in tied plastic bags, Bent, 2009, seat in knitted plastic bags© Anne-Cécile Rappa

Simon Monk, Enormous Charm no. 2, 2013, oil and alkyd on wood panel, 60 x 50 cm, and Enormous Charm no. 1, 2013, oil and alkyd on wood panel, 60 x 50 cm© Simon Monk

Nils Völker, Eighty-eight #2, 2013, installation, plastic, wood, alu-minium, plastic bags, electronics components, app. 550 x 400 x 50 cmPhotograph © Michael Lio

Dodi Reifenberg, Untitled, 2011, installa-tion. Photograph © Michael Lio