ZURICH.- The exhibition "Non-Solo show: Non-Group show" borrows its title from a solo exhibition by the Japanese artist Ei Arakawa staged at the Franco Soffiantino Gallery in Turin in 2008. Ei Arakawa invited two other artists, Nora Schultz and Henning Bohl, to participate with him in that exhibition. Based on this model, Kunsthalle Zürich invited Ei Arakawa, who in turn invited colleagues and collaborators, and four other artists to make individual presentations. Both projects will be presented simultaneously – spatially and temporally – and thus interweave the solo and group exhibition formats.

The working methods and artistic approaches of the artists participating in the "Non-Solo show, Non-Group show" are characterized by a series of similar features: they explore and test the production and possibilities of meaning offered by traditional artistic media such as painting, sculpture, photography, duplication and printing process, and installations; they share an experimental and improvised handling of accessible, used and pre-fabricated materials; they play with ideas concerning the self-organisation of the collective and the actionist and generally adopt a performative approach to both their own works and their handling of materials and spaces. The testing of different forms of historical model of the meaning of art and works of art in the tradition of the modern avant-garde also plays a role in their work as does the varying of ideas of the artistic environment as a situation involving the performative model for the inclusion of the audience.

The on-site production of works in different formats will also continue in special performative events to be staged throughout the duration of the exhibition. In addition to the actual opening “event” there will be a one-off screening of the film 'Torse' (1978) by Charles Atlas, which has only been shown publicly a few times hitherto. Torse presents a split-screen projection of an hour-long choreography by Merce Cunningham whose work addresses dialectical questions of chance and rule.