The Moderna Museet opens the 2014 art season with Kraftwerk in the exhibition Dance Machines – From Léger to Kraftwerk. The exhibition opens on 22 January. As an extension of the exhibition at Moderna Museet, Kraftwerk will also give exclusive concerts at Cirkus in Stockholm.
Moderna Museet’s upcoming exhibition Dance Machines – From Léger to Kraftwerk focuses on the fascination with machines, industry and everyday mechanisation. Jo Widoff, curator, comments on Kraftwerk’s impact on the exhibition:
“For more than four decades now, Kraftwerk have explored the relationship between man and machine. In the museum galleries, Kraftwerk’s 3-D installation will initiate an electronic and conceptual dialogue with early modernism, something I am certainly looking forward to.”
Commenting on the relationship between man and machine, Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hütter has said:
“It feels good to be part of the machine. It is a liberating feeling. For one thing because I, as an individual, take a back seat. We play the machines, and the machines play us.”
In the exhibition Kraftwerk will present their 3-D installation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 from 2013. The exhibition also features works by Giacomo Balla, Alexandra Ekster, Viking Eggeling, Fernand Léger and Francis Picabia.
In connection with the opening of the exhibition, Kraftwerk will perform at Cirkus in Stockholm on 21-22 January. The concerts are organised by Live Nation. Tickets for the concerts will be on sale from 12 November at 09.00 am on LiveNation.se and ticnet.se.
For further information, please contact:
Kristin Ek, press officer. +46 709 52 23 62
k.ek@modernamuseet.se
High-resolution press images are available at: Moderna Museet Press
More about Kraftwerk
The project Kraftwerk was founded by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Kraftwerk was part of the late-1960s experimental art scene and have had a seminal influence since 1970, when they set up the legendary Kling Klang Studio in Düsseldorf. They are regarded as pioneers and have inspired a myriad of musicians in different genres. In recent years, Kraftwerk have returned to the art scene, most recently with a series of acclaimed 3-D concerts at MoMA in New York (2012), Tate Modern in London (2013), and Kunstsammlung NRW in Düsseldorf (2013). The title of the installation, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, refers to Kraftwerk’s catalogue of works and their eight albums, Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986), The Mix (1991), and Tour de France (2003).
More about Dance Machines – From Léger to Kraftwerk
In the first decades of the 20th century, industrialised, mechanised society made inroads into art and everyday life. The Italian futurists proclaimed a new era, with the industrial sector and its machines as an aesthetic ideal. In a time of mass production and assembly lines, artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Gösta Adrian-Nilsson portrayed bodies reduced to mechanical objects. In Paris, the Mecca of the European avant-garde, the artists Fernand Léger and Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and the poets Blaise Cendrars and Guillaume Apollinaire were among the first to use modernity – and the modern city – as their subject matter. Film, choreography and dance became essential to portraying movement, energy and dynamism in the new era. The exhibition will present some 50 works from Moderna Museet’s renowned collection, along with works on loan from other institutions, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Dansmuseet in Stockholm. The exhibition is on view from 22 January to 27 April, 2014, at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Curator: Jo Widoff.
