Rendezvous in Singapore
"All the Best. The Deutsche
Bank Collection and Zaha Hadid" at the Singapore Art Museum
After
its success at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin and the Hara Museum in
Tokyo, the anniversary show of the Deutsche Bank Collection can be seen at
the renowned Singapore Art Museum beginning on September 2, 2006. In "All
the Best. The Deutsche Bank Collection and Zaha Hadid," over 150
controversial works on paper by young artists merge with the visionary
exhibition design of the London-based star architect to create a
spectacular Gesamtkunstwerk. Dr. Ariane Grigoteit, Director
of Deutsche Bank Art and one of the show's curators, on the encounter
between art and life and a museum with a very special aura.
The
Singapore Art Museum
A first visit to the
famous Singapore Art Museum
reveals it to be a magical place indeed. After a long flight and a drive
from the airport in the sultry climate of this Asian city-state, over
roads lined by tropical forests teeming with animal life, we are greeted
by the museum’s staff of experts headed by Director Kwok Kian Chow and
curator Joselina Cruz. The internationally renowned art museum possesses
the world’s most comprehensive public collection of South Asian
contemporary art and plays a central role in the cultural life of
Singapore.
Dr.
Ariane Grigoteit, Director of Deutsche Bank Art, and
Kwok
Kian Chow, Director of the SAM, in the atrium of the museum
Yet,
at first sight, the complex of buildings in classical Italianate style
appears to promise anything other than a collection of Asian art: the
museum is housed in a former Catholic boys‘ school, whose white
colonnades, Corinthian capitols, and cupola crowned with an ornate cross
attract the eye. Singapore owes this imposing edifice to the enterprise of
the De
La Salle Brothers. The Catholic order began construction of the
neo-classical missionary school — St.
Joseph’s Institution — on the corner opposite the cathedral in
the mid-19th century. After the school moved to a new location in the
1980s, the historical building was declared a national monument and
lavishly converted into a museum under the direction of architect Wong
Hooe Wai.
Atrium
of the Singapore Art Museums
But it is
something more than the impressive façade recalling Bernini’s
colonnade in Rome’s St. Peter’s Square — something more than the
courtyards with their palm trees and fountains, or the still-extant chapel
with its Stations of the Cross in which generations of schoolboys
worshipped — that makes this a magical place. It is also the young bridal
couple that, with apparent incongruity, has chosen this site to pose
before the camera — she in a long white bridal gown and he in a
traditional dark-colored wedding suit. As we join them in their photo
shoot, the groom proudly relates that he absolutely had to bring his bride
to this place, for it was here that he went to school.
Dr.
Ariane Grigoteit durign preparation for "All the best"
The
magical aura of the Singapore Art Museum is composed not only of the
commingling of past and present, of art and religion, but also—and above
all—of such multifaceted encounters between life and art.
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Laura Owens, Untitled, 2002, Deutsche
Bank Collection, © The Artist; Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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To be received as guests in Singapore’s renowned art museum
is thus both an honor and a pleasure. After the presentations in the Deutsche
Guggenheim in Berlin and the Hara
Museum in Tokyo, the trilogy of exhibitions marking the 25th
anniversary of the Deutsche
Bank Collection culminates here in a spectacular finale. All
the Best. The Deutsche Bank Collection and Zaha Hadid has been
specially conceived for Singapore and presents more than 150 exhibits from
the bank‘s collection in yet an-other visionary landscape that brings the
latest developments in the international art scene even more sharply into
focus.
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Juergen Teller, Bambi's Rescue, 2005,
Deutsche Bank Collection, ©Juergen Teller
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Any attempt to compile an exhibition of the objects in the
Deutsche Bank Collection must first of all come to grips with the wide
spectrum of artistic creativity represented in the collection‘s inventory
of more than 50,000 works. And faced with a list of renowned artists
ranging from the early 20th century to very recent newcomers to the
international art scene, curator Joselina Cruz has decided on a radically
contemporary orientation for the Singapore Art Museum‘s hosting of the
anniversary exhibition.
John
Bock, JB 18.08.05, 2005, Deutsche Bank Collection, © The Artist; Courtesy
Sadie Coles HQ, London
Flanked by artists the
likes of Joseph
Beuys, Eva
Hesse, and Bruce
Nauman, it’s primarily the works of the subsequent generation and
recent acquisitions that predominate in the show. Contemporary German art
is represented by artists such as John
Bock, Wolfgang
Tillmans, Gregor Schneider,
and Isa
Genzken, who will make a work for the German Pavilion, that is
sponsered by Deutsche Bank, at the Venice
Biennial in 2007. But the focus is on the collection’s global
approach. Accordingly, All the Best presents new works from the
USA, Latin America, South Africa, Russia, and Asia. In his opulent nudes
of black women, Chris
Ofili, the "Young British Artist" of Nigerian descent, picks up on the
exotic myths of the Expressionist group "Der
Blaue Reiter."
Dr.
Lakra, Untitled (mono blanco), 2005,
Deutsche
Bank Collection, © Dr. Lakra
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