Moment Monument

This publication on the exhibition "Moment.Monument" presents international positions of contemporary sculpture on the conflicting notions of duration and transitoriness. The exhibition addresses the contradiction between the traditional concept of the monument as a memorial and the processual approaches in contemporary sculpture. In contrast to avant-garde ideas, artistic approaches today no longer have to assert themselves as a radical break with tradition, but rather build on formal research that reaches into the past in a self-evident and calm manner. The approach to historical positions is broad, innovative, diverse, and independent. It is further refined by process-oriented approaches, novel materials, and the use of contemporary techniques. In addition, artists expand the historical positions through a content-related or poetic charging of the sometimes self-referential earlier forms. In this process, the enthusiastic citation of historical positions also serves as a method for redefining the concept of the monument. The focus is always on multi-layered strategies of narration and memory that reveal art to the world–as monuments to a present that is as fleeting as it is fragile. 

Konrad Bitterli, b. 1960, former curator of Kunstmuseum St. Gallen is since 2017 the new director of the Kunst Museum Winterthur and follows Dieter Schwarz in this directorate. Schwarz was an expert of art of the 1960s with worldwide high renown. The main focus in his work sees Konrad Bitterli in an intensive communication of art to the general public and wants to continue comparative works as was shown with the exhibitions Hodler–Giacometti, Daumier–Pettibon, or about the work of so different artists as alike Roman Signer, Steven Parino, Jonathan Lasker, Donald Judd, Mona Hartoum et al. He has been an editor and author of numerous books since the start of his career. Lynn Kost was from 2004 to 2011 artistic director of the Fumetto – International Comix Festival in Lucerne, before he moved to the Swiss Museum Allerheilingen in Schaffhausen and to Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur. Here he curated in 2018 the show Always Different, Always the Same. Lynn Kost has since moved to Kunstmuseum Winterthur, where he is now responsible for the program of contemporary art.