Upcoming exhibition: the most notable works of the “ZERO” art movement at the Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum
Works by the post-World War II avant-garde movement’s most noteworthy artists will meet art enthusiasts in September, with the collaboration of Akbank Sanat and Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum
With the main sponsorship of Akbank Sanat, the dynamic and revolutionary spirit of the German art movement ZERO will meet art enthusiasts on September 2, 2015 at Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum (SSM), Istanbul. The exhibition, which focuses on the ZERO art movement born in Germany after World War II, will bring together works by the movement’s founders Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, along with the works of notable artists who associated with the movement, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana. The ZERO exhibition at SSM will provide a comprehensive study of the movement through over 100 artworks produced in different techniques.
The ZERO movement, which was rediscovered and lauded by the New York art world through the ZERO exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 2014, was represented in Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin in 2015 with a different focus, and followed by a major exhibition currently on show through July 2015 at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. As the echoes of these exhibitions which shaped the world’s culture agenda continue, a brand new and different ZERO exhibition was designed for Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum, with the main sponsorship of Akbank Sanat. The exhibition will boast an entirely new composition of artworks, and will introduce the ZERO movement to art enthusiasts in Turkey through an extensive selection of artworks loaned from 19 different museums, galleries and private collections in the United States and Europe.
The exhibition, curated by the Director of the ZERO Foundation Mattijs Visser, will provide a major depiction of the art movement through its central themes such as “Time”, ”Space”, ”Color” and “Movement”, chronicling the lateral effects of the movement from its inception to today. The exhibition will open with a guided tour with curator Mattijs Visser, and boast rich event programming with conferences, film screenings, children’s workshops, and an exhibition catalogue. The ZERO exhibition will be on view at Sakıp Sabancı Museum through September 2, 2015 – January 10, 2016.
ZERO Movement
The ZERO movement, which constituted a response to the desperation and the stagnancy of the art world in the aftermath of World War II, takes its name from the countdown until the launch of a rocket. The ZERO movement, which travelled through countries, brought down borders and was adopted internationally in its active period during the 1950s and 1960s, accepts “Zero” as both a symbol as well as a starting point and imagines a new world without limits, through entirely new techniques and materials.