with ADEL ABDESSEMED, MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ, SANFORD BIGGERS, LOUISE BOURGEOIS, PETER BUGGENHOUT, NATHALIE DJURBERG, AMAR KANWAR, BHARTI KHER, SIGALIT LANDAU, TEA MÄKIPÄÄ, ANA MENDIETA, MARIELLA MOSLER, KIKI SMITH, NANCY SPERO, PHILIP TAAFFE, SU-MEI TSE

In celebration of its anniversary ‘Ten Years Museum of Art in the KKL Lucerne,’ Kunstmuseum Luzern, is presenting the ambitious thematic exhibition Signs of Life. This ties in with the successful exhibition trilogy in Lucerne: Another World: 12 Bedroom Stories (2002), me&more (2003) as well as a kind of magic (2005).

The exhibition follows two objectives. First, it wants no more than to enable an immediate and impressive art experience with specifically selected works. And second, it aims at initiating a reflection on the origin and development of art and on its fundamental ability to introduce into the world an object of significance. The exhibition focuses specifically on the use to which contemporary artists put ancient knowledge handed down in the visual arts, and how they use this knowledge to provide a perspective on the sensibilities of the twenty-first century. Imagination, Abstraction, Narrative: since its Paleolithic origins and continuing into the present day, art has always tackled life’s central questions. As paradoxical as it may seem, the visual arts are ideally suited to rendering immaterial principles and values intelligible and giving them a tangible presence. This occurs, for instance, when (divine or demonic) personages are imagined in figurative pictorial inventions. Another stylistic device traditionally employed by artists is reduction. This condenses complex facts into simple, abstract or ornamental forms. And finally there is the timeless expression of the cultural narrative handed down in stories, myths, and rituals, which includes an additional performative quality. These three artistic principles structure the exhibition’s dramaturgy.