exhibition view - Stop Painting - Fondazione Prada -Venezia - Photo - Marco Cappelletti - courtesy Fondazione Prada
"Was the reccuring ghost telling the story of the end of painting a
phantom problem?
and if yes, can phantoms be real?"
Peter Fischli
Ca Corner della Regina - Fondazione Prada - Venice
Stop Painting
An Exhibition by Peter Fischli
Stop Painting is an exhibition conceived by Peter Fischli at the Fondazione Prada in Venice, until November 21. Described by Fischli as "a kaleidoscope of repudiated gestures", the project explores a series of specific ruptures within the history of painting in the last 150 years, intertwined with the emergence of new social factors and cultural values. It also intends to understand if the current digital revolution can also cause a new crisis of painting or, on the contrary, contribute to the renewal.
Michelangelo Pistoletto - Vetrina - Oggetti in meno - 1965-66
photograph by Tom Haller - courtesy Fondazione Prada
Fischli identified five radical ruptures caused by technological and social changes that marked the artistic paradigm shifts through rejection and rienvention of painting. The artist conceived the exhibition divided into 10 sections as a plurality of different narratives told by himself in the first person. It begins on the ground floor with a new site-specific artwork by Fischli himself which consists of a scaled-down model of the entire project, defined by the artist as
"a sculpture of a painting exhibition". "Stop Painting."
which brings together more than 110 artworks by over 80 artists, which unfolds on the first floor of the palazzo following not a chronological order, but a personal and idiosyncratic approach.
Peter Fischli
Peter Fischli - Modellone - 2021
Josh Smith - Untitled - 2021
"From today, painting is dead."
Paul Delaroche
1840c.
Section 1 - Delirium of Negation
Jean-Frederic Schnyder - Hudel - 1983-2004
Jorg Immendorff - Wo stehst du mit deiner Kunst, Kollege? - 1973
"popolar fear of evasion of the human subjectivety through the machine"
Diedrich Diederichsen
Section 2 - Mensch Maschine
Marcel Breuer - Richard Schadewell - "Bauhaus" telephone - 1930
Niki de Saint Phalle - Old Master - non tire - c. 1961
Jean Tinguely - Meta-Matic No. 6 - 1959
Section 3 - Niente da Vedere Niente da Nascondere
Here the works are covered up, put away, veiled, or smashed. The potential of the - hidden - image is nullified and the possibility of the fetishization of the surface is denied to the viewer, there might be nothing to unveil.
Klara Liden - Untitled - Poster Painting - 2007
David Hammons - Untitled - 2008
Walter De Maria - Silver Portrait of Dorian Gray - 1965
Section 4 - Word Versus Image
The inclusion of textural fragments on the picture plane and the theoretical investigation into the relationship between images and texts are among the constituents 20th-century painting.
John Baldessari - What Is Painting - 1966-68
Gene Beery - Out of Style - 1961
Gene Beery - As Long As There Are Walls There Will Be Painting - 1986
exhibition view - Stop Painting - Fondazione Prada -Venezia - Photo - Marco Cappelletti - courtesy Fondazione Prada
"painting itself lost its context and became an object, ready-made-context-less and world-less."
Boris Groys
Section 5 - When Paintings Became Things
Jana Euler - Where the Energy Comes From 1 - 2014
Olivier Mosset - Door - 2002
Section 6 - Spelling Backwards
The works displayed in - Spelling Backwards - convey the idea that there is no such thing as an - essence of painting.
Gerhard Richter - Farbtafel - 1966
Section 7 - Die Hard - Stirb Langsam - Duri a Morire
The paradox of the avant-gardist painting critique lingers in the subtext - Die Hard - Stirb Langsam - Duri a Morire: what happens when the modernist dogma is being challenged by the very same artist that defined it?
Marcel Broodthaers - Dix-neuf petits tableaux en pile - 1973
Section 8 - Next to Nothing
Next to Nothing deals with the monochrome, the empty canvas and the idea of leaving a mark.
Poster of the exhibition - Robert Rauschenberg: White Paintings - 1951 - 12-27.10.1968
John Armleder - Untitled - 1979-80
Puppies Puppies - Jade Kuriki Olivo - Painting to Pay for My Healthcare - 2019
"Painting faced a crisis as consumer society colonized materials and forms that had been seen as painting's terrain."
Mark Godfrey
Section 9 - Readymades Belong To Everyone
Andy Warhol BMW Art Car # 4 - 1979
Marcel Duchamp - Apolinere Enameled - 1916-17 (1965)
exhibition view - Stop Painting - Fondazione Prada -Venezia - Photo - Marco Cappelletti - courtesy Fondazione Prada
Section 10 - Let's Go and Say No
There is an indissoluble link between the critique of painting and the critique of the culture industry, in particular starting with the protests of workers and students in the late 1960s.
Lucio Fontana - Io sono un santo - 1958
Adrian Piper - Catalysis III - 1970
Boris Lurie - Stenciled NOs - 1969