Superstition
Curator: Erich Weiss
When you spill salt, do you throw some over your shoulder? Do you knock on wood when you want something good to happen or blow out birthday candles after making a wish? What about stepping on sidewalk cracks, killing spiders, shattering mirrors and opening an umbrella indoors?
Curator, artist and magic thinker Erich Weiss assembled a wonderful cast for this subject: Nina Beier & Simon Dybbroe Møller, Otto Berchem, Pierre Bismuth, Santiago Borja, Ulla von Brandenburg, Stefan Brüggemann, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, Keren Cytter, Uri Geller, Joachim Koester, Germaine Kruip, Nils Nova, Joanna Piotrowska, John Stezaker and Mungo Thomson.
Artists have always had a fascination with phenomena that defy rational explanation. The surrealists were obsessed with the analysis and creative possibilities of dream states. Authors including Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs, and Alan Ginsberg explored (sometimes with help of drugs) the boundaries between reality and fiction. Directors Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovski captured the way superstition informed the imagination and consciousness.
Superstition, an exhibition about magic and illusion. Artist Nils Nova twisted reality. He turned the room on its head. The same goes for Stefan Brüggemann’s suggestion that the work will be destroyed if you look away, and for Nils Nova and Germaine Kruip’s remarkable fascination with mirrors, and for Joanna Piotrowska’s videos, in which nothing really happened but there’s still a threatening undertone. Superstition was about ordinary, everyday things. The important part is how we interpret them.
Performance during opening
The musical piece Crickets by Mungo Thomson was performed live during the opening of the exhibition by students of the Maastricht Academy of Music, conducted by Roderik Povel.
Curator Erich Weiss
Erich Weiss (BE, º6.6.66) had exhibitions as an artist at Hans & Fritz Contemporary London, UK (2018), Scope Copenhagen, DK (2017), Museo Experimental El Eco, MX (2016/2017), Gallery Bernhard Bischoff Bern, CH (2016), Filmmuseum München, DE (2010), MARTa Herford, DE (2009), MACBA Barcelona, ES (2009), Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest, RO (2007). Recent curatorial activities include: Cravan Maintenant!, and Rineke Dijkstra, both in Museu Picasso Barcelona (2017), Huis Sonneveld Rotterdam, NL (2016/2017), Fantastic Art in Belgium, Tokyo/Utsonomiya/ Kobe, JP (2017), Surrealism & Beyond, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, NL (2016),The Star Alphabet of ELT Mesens Mu.ZEE Oostende, BE (2012/2013)
Thanks to
The Danish Arts Foundation, Pro Helvetia and Mondriaan Fund, the public cultural funding organization focusing on visual arts and cultural heritage. The Mondriaan Fund contributed to the artists’ fees through the experimental regulations.
