50 Times Bonami and Obrist by Teller

Description

On the occasion of Hans Ulrich Obrist's fiftieth birthday in 2018, Swiss gallery 107 S-chanf asked fellow curator Francesco Bonami to create a celebratory exhibition. Bonami's initial idea was to invite 50 artists to create 50 portraits of Obrist in an ambitious collaborative homage. Yet the idea proved a little too ambitious, and Bonami decided to create the portraits all by himself. The gallery provided him with space and materials, and within just two weeks Bonami's 50 oil paintings were ready-endearing and humorous works, many of which playfully incorporate art figures of the past and present including Edward Hopper, Ai Weiwei and Georg Baselitz. During the Engadine Art Talks in January 2019 Juergen Teller was invited to view the exhibition "50 Times Obrist by Bonami," and with characteristic spontaneity he photographed Bonami and Obrist before each portrait. This resulting book, with Teller's photos on the left-hand pages and Bonami's paintings on the right, is an unconventional and tongue-in-cheek portrait of a portrait. To me, Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist is what Campbell's soup was to Andy Warhol. He's the epitome of art, a sculpture, an icon. Francesco Bonami

Born in Florence in 1955, Francesco Bonami is a renowned art critic and curator. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze and in the early nineties moved to the US where he was senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. In 2002 Bonami was artistic director of Turin's Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and in 2003 he was director of the fiftieth Venice Biennale. His books include Si crede Picasso. Come distinguere un vero artista contemporaneo da uno che non lo e (2010) and L'arte nel cesso. Da Duchamp a Cattelan, ascesa e declino dell'arte contemporanea (2017). Juergen Teller, born in Erlangen, Germany, in 1964, studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt fur Photographie in Munich. His work has been published in influential magazines such as Vogue, System, i-D, POP and Arena Homme+, and has been the subject of solo exhibitions including those at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Teller won the prestigious Citibank Photography Prize in 2003, and from 2014 to 2019 held a professorship at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Nurnberg. His books with Steidl include Louis XV (2005), Marc Jacobs Advertising, 1998-2009 (2009), Siegerflieger (2015), The Master IV (2019) and Handbags (2019).

[In 50 Times Bonami and Obrist, Teller turns] two globe-trotting curators... into artworks themselves.--Alex Greenberger "ARTnews"