CHOCOLATE, WHAT ELSE

Curator: Elisabeth Thoman- Oberhofer, Innsbruck
An exhibition realized in collaboration with the New Museum Nuremberg.

60ies and 70ies so-called new sculpture from the USA and the preoccupation with painting from the 1990ies onward form the backbone of the collection established by the German gallery owner and collector Rolf Ricke. The collection, on permanent loan at the New Museum Nuremberg since 2002, comprises 66 artists overall and more than 200 objects. It abounds in big names and outstanding works. Rolf Ricke, who has been a gallery owner and collector for forty years, to this day is one of the most important mediators introducing contemporary American art to Germany and Europe. Numerous well-known artists from the US had their first European exhibitions at his gallery, among them Richard Serra and Keith Sonnier. And Ricke’s angle on America is not limited to New York alone. The spectrum extends as far as the latest trends in Californian painting.  

The exhibition at the Kunstraum Innsbruck highlights the emphasis accorded the language of the objects and materials used: mass and weight, texture and tactile qualities, colour, reflection of light and surface structure on the one hand, and connotations of function and imagery on the other. One of the focal points will be groups of works by Bill Bollinger and Barry Le Va presented side by side with objects by Richard Artschwager, Joe Baer, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Gary Kuehn, Lee Lozano, Richard Serra and Keith Sonnier. The second part of the exhibition will take a look at installation painting: Elizabeth Cooper, Fabian Marcaccio, Carl Ostendarp, Steven Parrino, David Reed, Günter Umberg and recent Californian painting by Ingrid Calame, Amy Green, and Steven Hull.      

I would like to show that art really is quite simple. It is readable. Whatever it may be about -–one can see very clearly how something is made. And that’s what I appreciate in art. (Rolf Ricke)