Förg: from and against Modernism, with a response by Fischli & Weiss

There is something of a paradox in the idea of coming 'from' somewhere and going 'against' it at the same time - two gestures that are, at least in principle, mutually exclusive. Yet it seems like the legacy of Modernism's utopian ideas in art, design and architecture leave us with little choice other than admitting this impossible imperative into the logic of our time. Modernism, as we have come to accept, assumed ownership over squares and circles, monochromatic surfaces and functionalist tactics of production. It consumed all that was decorative into its minimalist simplicity, and proclaimed a way to replace the holy with the materially and otherwise conceptually profound, giving secular ideas a religious sense of purposefulness. Little was left outside its reach by the time talk began of its decline and the emergence of what became known as Post-modernst culture.

Förg: from and against Modernism, with a response by Fischli & Weiss is a proposition to revisit the works of three pioneering art practitioners that renegotiated the terms of artistic production and media from the 1970s onwards, introducing a wide range of new artistic devices that continue to inform contemporary art practices as a mode of critical thinking. The implicit relationship that underlines the exhibition - 'from' and 'against' - accounts in part for the historical task assumed by these artists, but it also extends to the relationship between them, crossing over in some respects, opposing in others, and at times departing altogether. The discrepencies, however, are as informative as the similarities.