Monster Chetwynd. The Trompe L’Oeil Cleavage Cat. Kunsthaus Zurich

The English artist Monster Chetwynd (b. 1973 in London) rose to international fame with her carnivalesque performances, reminiscent of medieval mysteries and carnival games, that draw on themes from art history and popular culture. In 2012, she was the first performance artist to be nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize, and to this day her work occupies one of the most influential positions in the field of contemporary performance. Chetwynd’ s artistic work, however, encompasses much more: she works with painting and sculpture, installations and films. Her artistic practice is informed by the invocation and combination of a wide range of culturally based sources. She creates something new, often combining humor with curiosity, and seeks out collaborations – these are the most striking characteristics of her work. The exhibition at Kunsthaus Zurich is the first comprehensive presentation of Monster Chetwynd’ s work in Switzerland. More than sixty pieces from the last twenty-five years are on display in an immersive exhibition architecture. The book accompanying the exhibition » The Trompe L’ Oeil Cleavage« presents the diversity of the artist’ s work in an aesthetic form.

Anne Demester (b. 1975) studied at Ghent University Germanic philology, she was assistant of Jan Hoet, realized a couple of exhibitions for him in Belgium, Holland and Germany. From 2003– 2006 she was director of W139, an exhibition and production space for contemporary art in Amsterdam. In May 2006, she became the director of De Appel in Amsterdam. On February 2014, she was appointed director of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands. From October 2022 on she is director of the Kunsthalle Zurich, the largest art museum of Switzerland. Emily Pethick (b. 1975) has been the director of the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam since 2018. She was previously the director of The Showroom, London (2008– 2018, of Casco, Utrecht (2005– 2008), and curator at Cubitt, London (2003– 2004). She has contributed to publications and co-edited numerous books and has participated in numerous juries for artist awards, including the 2017 Turner Prize. Elisabeth Bronfen (b. 1958) is an author of many monographs, scholary essays, and journalism in the field of visual culture, cultural analysis, and literary studies. She is known for her work on representation of feminity, death and the aesthetic, on hysteria, on a cultural history of the night, on Hollywood cinema, and on seriality and TV drama. Her newest publication engages with seriality in Shakespeare’ s oeuvre. She calls her hermeneutic process “ crossmapping” . She has also written for many exhibition catalogs and has curated several exhibitions herself. Raphael Gygax (b. 1980) is a curator, art historian, and author based in Locarno. He studied art history, film, and drama studies at the Universities of Bern and Zurich. The topic of his PhD was on the use of instrumentalised bodies in contemporary art. From 2003– 2019 he was curator at the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art in Zurich. He also curated exhibitions in Paris, London, Locarno, and New York. From 2019– 2023, he was the deputy director of the Department of Fine Art at Zurich University of the Arts, and since fall 2023, he has been independent curator at the Kunsthaus Zurich. Monster Chetwynd (b. 1973, London) lives and works in Zurich. She graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in painting (2004), and holds a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Art (2000) and a BA in Social Anthropology and History from UCL (1995). In addition to her artistic practice, Monster Chetwynd teaches in the BA Fine Arts Program at the Zurich University of the Arts. In 2012 she was nominated for the Turner Prize. Also she had numerous partially great international solo exhibitions: 2024 BMCA Nanjing, 2023 Schirn Kunsthall Frankfurt, 2021 Studio Voltaire London.