Museion celebrates its 10th anniversary with “Body Check”

This year Museion, the museum of modern and contemporary art in Bolzano (South Tyrol, Italy), celebrates the 10th anniversary in its striking venue designed by Berlin-based architects KSV with a rich program of events and exhibitions. Opening the exhibition season, “Body Check” by guest curator Veit Loers is a detailed exploration of Martin Kippenberger and Maria Lassnig’s work. Drawing on more than sixty artworks spanning two decades – mostly from the 1990s to the 2000s – including paintings, drawings and video, the show highlights the unexplored connections between the oeuvres of these two great artists who both decided to dismiss geometric abstraction and monochrome to place the body firmly at the centre of their work.

Even though they belonged to two different generations and never met each other, Kippenberger (1953-1997) and Lassnig (1919-2014) explore the human body as a tormented expression of the self and the world, depicting it as a fragmented, deconstructed entity that is a metaphor for social and psychological conflicts. At the same time, the exhibition doesn’t fail to examine the differences in their approach: Kippenberger's work embraces the grotesque, with a darkly humorous, theatrical vein, whereas Lassnig takes a more obsessive and introverted view, with feminist overtones.

The large-scale, vividly colorful works are hosted in the fourth floor of the museum, which has been redesigned for the occasion by Marco Palmieri. Free standing walls face each other, creating separate yet parallel spaces, just like the lives and creations of Maria Lassnig and Martin Kippenberger.