STOCKHOLM.- Objects and Bodies at Rest and in Motion focuses on the tension between the human body and the solid object. The exhibition presents some 30 works by minimalists, post-minimalists and choreographers who were active in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite their differences, these artists related to similar issues – a form of artistic basic research and questioning of the prevailing ideas on sculpture and painting and the borderland in between.

Objects and Bodies at Rest and in Motion is based on the Moderna Museet collection, with a special focus on the so-called New York Collection (donated in 1973), which includes works by Donald Judd and Frank Stella. The exhibition is also complemented with key works by Carl Andre, Jo Baer and Agnes Martin, that have been borrowed from other collections. Geometric forms and serial repetitions are central to minimalism. The works, many of which are made of household or industrial materials, share the space with the spectator, rather than being windows to another universe. They can be viewed as stage sets, or, alternatively, as architecture or furniture. The phrase “What you see is what you see”, coined by the painter Frank Stella, serves as a slogan for this matter-of-fact aesthetics.

The relationship between the human body and the solid object is also lucidated by groundbreaking choreographers such as Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown, who worked with many of the same artistic issues as their contemporaries in the visual arts. In Agnes Martin’s meditative paintings, Richard Tuttle’s works and Eva Hesse’s sensually tactile sculptures, we again find the relationship to the human body, but without the cold rationalism sometimes associated with minimalism. Richard Tuttle’s Paper Octagonal, for instance, is a piece whose dimensions are related to the artist’s own body, and in Franz Erhard Walther’s work the focus is on the relationship between the viewer’s body and the artist’s fabric objects.

“What happened in art and dance during a few years in the sixties fundamentally changed the relationship between viewer and artwork. Instead of standing outside and looking in, the viewer became a participant – and, as such, a co-creator. This is the explosive political force behind the polished abstract surfaces. Frank Stella was wrong: what you see is not only what you see!” says Magnus af Petersens, curator of the exhibition.

Objects and Bodies at Rest and in Motion features some 30 works by: Carl Andre, Jo Baer, Trisha Brown, Eva Hesse, Dan Flavin, Simone Forti, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Walter De Maria, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Yvonne Rainer, Joel Shapiro, Frank Stella, Richard Tuttle, Ruth Vollmer, Franz Erhard Walther, and Hannah Wilke.

Objects and Bodies at Rest and in Motion has previously been shown at Moderna Museet Malmö.