AMSTERDAM.- Hybrid Sculpture presents a selection of work from the collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam that reveals how radically sculpture has changed since 1990. The exhibition will feature more than twenty pieces, most of them large-scale works, by eighteen artists. The title Hybrid Sculpture refers to the fact that almost none of the works looks like a sculpture in the traditional sense: the artists blur the boundaries between sculpture and painting, performance, video art and design. Some of the artworks have never been shown in the museum before.

For the artists in Hybrid Sculpture, the aim is not to create a ‘pure’ sculpture informed by the classic sculptural properties such as volume and space. Instead, their practice centres around combining a variety of media and appropriating objects from pop culture and everyday life, transforming them by changing their size, colour or material.

For instance, Marc Bijl’s Suicide Machine (2003) consists of a motorbike accompanied by the statement ‘Ready to Crash and Burn’, Cerith Wyn Evans chooses to execute his text in white neon, while John Knight’s installation is composed of porcelain plates, and Dorothy Akpene Amenuke has created a wall-filling textile artwork. The installation by Jimmy Robert contains the remnants of a past performance, including a nineteenth-century gold-plated folding screen that served as a backdrop, stage and room divider, and mirrors worn by the artist during the performance. In Abroath Smokie (2016), Magali Reus uses fabric and leather processing materials to create sculptural forms that, while not directly referring to existing objects, still evoke associations with saddles, motorbikes and blankets. Tobias Rehberger's highly hybrid oeuvre is a fusion of sculpture and design. The Schauspieler series by Isa Genzken consists of extravagantly dressed mannequins in theatrical poses and setting. These “urban cowboys” and “aliens”, as she calls them, could be extras from a futuristic film. For this series Genzken used garments from her own wardrobe and with the “Schauspieler” explored both the limits of the self-portrait and the boundary between private identity and public image.

Leontine Coelewij, curator contemporary art and curator of the exhibition: “These purchases and donations of the past thirty years demonstrate the freedom with which contemporary artists approach sculpture, constantly challenging and expanding the medium’s limits. They have completely redefined the domain of sculpture, and we are proud that we can show this based on our own collection.”

Hybrid Sculpture includes work by:

Dorothy Akpene Amenuke (GH, 1968) • Marc Bijl (NL, 1970) • Rob Birza (NL, 1962) • Rosella Biscotti (IT, 1978) • Cosima von Bonin (KE, 1962) • Kerstin Brätsch (DE, 1979) • Keith Edmier (US, 1967) • Isa Genzken (DE, 1948) • Thomas Hirschhorn (CH, 1957) • John Knight (US, 1945) • Jeff Koons (US, 1955) • Louise Lawler (US, 1947) • Helen Marten (GB, 1985) • Tobias Rehberger (DE, 1966) • Magali Reus (NL, 1981) • Jimmy Robert (FR, 1975) • Jessica Stockholder (US, 1959) • Cerith Wyn Evans (GB, 1958)