I, Artist – feat. Gregory Tara Hari & Céline Brunko, Jos Näpflin, Nusser Glazova, Johanna Müller, Jason Rohr

November 27 2022 – January 22 2023

Until very recently and apart from a few exceptions, it was a no go for a serious artist to put his persona into the limelight or to advertise openly for his own work. This kind of decency is something not quite understood by the millennials and digital natives, and their assertive and fearless attitude towards self promotion is an important part of the exhibition I, Artist. With Gregory Tara Hari (b. 1993, lives and works in Zurich), Nusser Glazova (b. 1991 and 1996, live and work in Zurich), Johanna Müller (b. 1990, lives and works in Winterthur and Paris), and Jason Rohr (b. 1999, lives and works in Zurich), a number of young artists were commissioned by Kunsthalle Winterthur to produce a new work for the show, and they do not disappoint: Gregory Tara Hari starts from his series The Annual New Year Message, a mixture of a written summary of the artists’ year and a photo edition, and publishes it for the first time as a video, produced together with Céline Brunko (b. 1987, lives and works in Zurich). Nusser Glazova samples filmed snippets of their artistic everyday life into Tik Tok reels, Johanna Müller uses AI algorithms to merge herself and her artwork into a series of spooky metamorphoses. And finally Jason Rohr bought alcohol in abundance and checked into a luxury hotel for one night, in order to think about himself, his artwork and the world in general.
The commissioned works are acting as the main attraction in the show. However, I, Artist also wants to give insight into other contemporary forms and formats of artistic self-representation and self-staging, and therefore comprises a selection of video content produced by institutional, commercial and curatorial players. ARTuesday for example is a series by the curators duo baronebreu from Zurich. They promoted a total of 16 artists’ portraits on Instagram in 2021, a selection of which will be on display at Kunsthalle Winterthur. What Happened to Us? from 2007 is a very early example of a social media clip and portrays Dan Perjovschi while installing his work at the MoMA. Also on display are At the Studio with Paul Noble by Gagosian (2017), Nicolas Party: In the Studio by Hauser & Wirth (2018), and Meet the Artist – Anne Imhof, produced by Art Basel (2021).
To demonstrate that self-representation does not necessarily have to be connected with clever posing, sexy editing and catchy sound, I, Artist shows Scan 2 - PET (2019) by Jos Näpflin (b. 1950, lives and works in Zurich). The work is the result of a complete medical body scan of the artist, being at least as cutting edge as social media when it comes to technological evolution. However, being a sober representation of physical facts it looks like the driest possible answer to all artistic and artificial representation of what someone wants to be.

The exhibition I, Artist is supported by Migros Kulturprozent, Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung, and Showtronics Solutions AG.