ZURICH.- The Kunsthaus Zürich has received 23 works of contemporary art on permanent loan from the Walter A. Bechtler Foundation. Five of the works are now on display: room-sized installations by Liam Gillick and Fischli/Weiss, and three sculptures by Rebecca Warren. The planned long-term collaboration between the Foundation and the Kunsthaus will strengthen the latter’s offerings in art after 1960, which the Kunsthaus aims to highlight in particular with the opening of its Extension.

Over the years to come the Kunsthaus Zürich will integrate permanent loans from the Walter A. Bechtler Foundation into the presentation of its Collection. Works by Liam Gillick, Fischli/Weiss and Rebecca Warren are the first on display.

CURRENT PRESENTATION: GILLICK, WARREN, FISCHLI/WEISS
‘The Two Hundred and Twenty Second Floor’ (2005), a 200-m2 installation by British artist Liam Gillick, is on view until early August, Rebecca Warren’s three delicate painted bronze sculptures until November, and the standing installation ‘Untitled (Chamer Raum)’ (1991) by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, which may be viewed through a window, for an indefinite period.

23 WORKS BY 17 ARTISTS
The permanent loans from the Walter A. Bechtler Foundation will create long-term synergies with the Kunsthaus Collection, which consists largely of donations and privately financed acquisitions. Works already at the Kunsthaus will be enhanced and expanded into thematic groups, with the juxtaposition of newer and older pieces from a given oeuvre making the artist’s creative development visible – as in the case of Rebecca Warren. The room-sized installation ‘The Two Hundred and Twenty Second Floor’ by hot British artist Liam Gillick, which the Kunsthaus today could scarcely have purchased singlehandedly, adopts basic design principles of Minimal Art. Using large lettering, metal cubes and geometric shapes painted on the walls and floor, Gillick also poignantly addresses the relationship of labour and productivity and the space reserved for human action and creation within prefabricated, obsolete production processes. His social criticism thus enters into dialogue with the work of younger artists, whose pieces the Kunsthaus has acquired on its own. The collaboration with the Walter A. Bechtler Foundation currently involves 23 works by 17 artists – among them audiovisual pieces by Doug Aitken, Akram Zaatari and Tacita Dean, installations by Tobias Madison, and a picture and an object by Pamela Rosenkranz. Further temporary hangings are planned for 2016 and 2017.

WALTER A. BECHTLER FOUNDATION
The Walter A. Bechtler Foundation has been affiliated with the Kunsthaus Zürich since it was established in 1955 by Walter A. Bechtler (1905–1994), an engineer from the town of Zollikon. Together with his brother Hans, Walter A. Bechtler, who was also an art collector, contributed significantly to the constitution and administration of the Alberto Giacometti Foundation; his goal was to make key contemporary sculptures available to a broader viewership in the public sphere. To this end, his Foundation acquired art works and saw to it that they could be put on public display in the greater Zurich area. In recent years, under the leadership of Rudolf Bechtler and Thomas Bechtler, the Foundation has been focussing on partnerships with important Swiss museums – in addition to the Kunsthaus Zürich, with the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, the Aargauer Kunsthaus and the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne. The Foundation also supports exhibitions around the world with its loans and continues to acquire works of international and Swiss contemporary art. The group of works made available to the Kunsthaus will be expanded in future by agreement of both parties concerned.