ZURICH.- John Waters (b. 1946), the style icon and ‘enfant terrible’ of American cinema, has influenced the aesthetic of independent film-making like no other: not just as director, but also as artist, actor, performer and author. As the world of film infiltrates our lives – nurturing dreams, awakening obsessions and longings – so it affects visual artists. It comes as no surprise, then, that Waters himself has a fine-art oeuvre to his credit. The Kunsthaus Zürich pays tribute to this key area of John Waters’ achievement with some 40 small to large-format film storyboards and three-dimensional works that showcase this little-known facet of an exceptional film director and multi-talented artist.

AN IRONIC TAKE ON CODES OF COMMUNICATION IN THE ART SYSTEM
John Waters’ works are often serial in nature. The ironic critique of ‘Artistically Incorrect’ (2006) confronts us with slogans such as ‘No, it’s not archival!’ and ‘All photographs fade’, reminding us that the codes of communication within the art system consist largely of verbiage that, to the outsider, has little to do with the visionary and magical power customarily ascribed to art. ‘Movie Star Jesus’ (1996) exemplifies Waters’ interest in assembling a ‘typology’ of still images featuring film figures and scenes that, for him, exert an irresistible visual fascination. Waters’ transition from the film format to photography makes us aware that certain themes can only be formally investigated and defined artistically via the static image or frozen object.

GIFT TO THE KUNSTHAUS COLLECTION
An ironic and mordant observer, Waters skewers the Hollywood dream factory, mercilessly exposing the establishment and its foibles, as the edition ‘Tragedy’ (2015), created for the art magazine ‘Parkett’, clearly demonstrates. The object, a homage to Jayne Mansfield’s death, created using acrylic, artificial hair, painted silicone and urethane, is being donated to the Kunsthaus by its owner, This Brunner, as are all the approximately 40 works by Waters in the exhibition. As a result, the museum acquires the first and most comprehensive collection by this maverick artist. In an accompanying publication (published by Scheidegger & Spiess, 96 pages, 50 illustrations), philosopher and literary critic Stefan Zweifel locates Waters’ production within the artist’s life’s work and the art world in general. It is available from the Kunsthaus shop for CHF 24.

PERFORMANCE WITH JOHN WATERS
A live performance will take place at 6.30 p.m. on 23 September in the auditorium of the Kunsthaus, with Waters presenting his legendary 90 minute one-man show ‘This Filthy World’. Tickets will be on sale for CHF 22 (members CHF 20) in the museum from 5 September.