Exhibition The Present 2007
From 2 June until 16 September 2007 the exhibition The Present was on display at the Stedelijk Museum, giving viewers the first opportunity to see the artworks that have been added to The Monique Zajfen Collection. Focusing on the human figure and spanning a range of disciplines, the works in this exhibition explored various aspects of the human condition.
The opening piece was a monumental work by Thomas Schütte – three caricatural, scarecrow-like figures, who gaze threateningly into the space. The bald-headed men refer to Chinese culture while, with blankets about their shoulders, they have the look of vagrants. Facing them was Marlene Dumas’ The Believer, a portrait of a Palestinian suicide from her series Mankind. In no uncertain terms, the painting comments that, as far as appearances go, the image of Mediterranean men is never free from preconceptions; at any rate we can no longer see them with an unprejudiced eye.
In the same space, Mike Kelley played with conventions with the piece Mr. and Mrs. Hermaphrodite, in this case with male and female sexual characteristics. In a series of paintings, Wilhelm Sasnal offered memories of Japan, while Neo Rauch linked the pasts of the Prussian and German Democratic Republic with current issues.
In the next room, visitors could sit among the monitors of the video installation The Dancers by Pawel Althamer. The artist approached this work through social intervention: he concluded a contract with homeless men to film them dancing naked, hand in hand, in a reference to dispossession, and to Matisse. A few paces further Lisa Yuskavage evoked the romance of a teenage girl’s bedroom in an erotically-charged feast of visual pleasure – her first work to be acquired for the collection of a European museum. The improbable girl is bathed in a golden glow, remote and unattainable, rather a depiction of an odd idealised image than a young woman of flesh and blood.
A different kind of escapism was presented by Paul Graham in the very last room: he photographed teenagers in discos, and shows a detached generation that prefers to live by night.
Eija-Liisa Ahtila and George Condo presented people in a state of mental oppression, ground down by the jaws of contemporary society. Ahtila’s videowork The Present, also the title of the exhibition, deals with women tormented by obsessions for whom self-forgiveness would be the greatest gift.
Every year works of The Monique Zajfen Collection are on show at the Stedelijk Museum. On years with an uneven number the museum shows the recent acquisitions, on years with even numbers the acquired works by winners of The Vincent Award are on display.
Click here to download the brochure of the exhibition The Present as a PDF-file.
Neo Rauch, Neujahr, 2005
oil on canvas, 270 x 210 cm
The Monique Zajfen Collection
Photo: Stedelijk Museum / Gert Jan van Rooij
Marlene Dumas, The Believer, 2006
oil on canvas, 130,5 x 110 cm
The Monique Zajfen Collection
Photo: Stedelijk Museum / Gert Jan van Rooij
Lisa Yuskavage, Persimmons, 2006
oil on canvas, 122,5 x 183 cm
The Monique Zajfen Collection
Photo: Stedelijk Museum / Gert Jan van Rooij