Hans-Ulrich Obrist Quotes
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At a certain moment, when I started doing my own shows, I felt it would be really interesting to know what is the history of my profession. I realized that there was no book, which was kind of a shock.
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Our economy's growth functions by inciting us to produce more and more with each passing year. In turn, we require cultural forms to enable us to sort through the glut, and our rituals are once again directed towards the immaterial, towards quality and not quantity.
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I don't wake up in the morning and think about Franz Kline.
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It's quite an obscure notion for a kid, no? To want to be a curator. But even then, I knew that I would do this.
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One of my favourite exhibitions is called 'Do It,' which I co-curated with the artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier 21 years ago.
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Switzerland felt incredibly narrow, growing up. It was good, in a way. There were so many museums. But it was always a no-brainer that I would have to leave, and I'm grateful for that.
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At Performa in New York, there are a lot of commissions, but Manchester Festival is the only festival where everything is fully produced by the festival.
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During my time at high school and university in Kreuzlingen and St. Gallen, I traveled around Europe looking at art, visiting artists, studios, galleries and museums.
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When I was 17, I met many artists, and it started to become this conversation with artists out of which all of my exhibitions grew.
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I would go from one city to the next, inspired by the monks in the Middle Ages, who would carry knowledge from one monastery to the next monastery.
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Exhibitions are kind of ephemeral moments, sometimes magic moments, and when they're gone, they're gone.
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Everything I do is somehow connected to velocity.
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I really do think artists are the most important people on the planet, and if what I do is a utility and helps them, then that makes me happy. I want to be helpful.
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I remember going to a monastery library when I was very young and being surrounded by ancient books. I fell in love.
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My most famous show is the 'Kitchen Show.' More famous than any gallery show or museum show I curated.
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I have many intense friendships with artists. I don't mean we have intense one-day conversations but ongoing conversations that last in some cases for years.
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At a certain time, an artist needs a big retrospective. At other times, they need a more focused exhibition. It's a different story each time; it's about establishing a dialogue.
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Alex Poots has always made a bridge between highly experimental and the mainstream.
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I'm trying to expand the notion of curating. Exhibitions need not only take place in galleries, need not only involve displaying objects. Art can appear where we expect it least.
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I founded a club, which is called the Brutally Early Club. It's basically a breakfast salon for the 21st century where art meets science meets architecture meets literature.
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For me, the making of exhibitions has always had to do with dialogue: a concentrated, in-depth, focused dialogue with artists, who keep teaching me that exhibitions should always invent new rules for the game.
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Exhibitions usually are not collected; they disperse after they take place.
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Mr. Koons's work has always inspired architects, which I think is very interesting. I think he is an artist who has reinvented himself so many times and reinvented so many different series.
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To record is a process against forgetting. I do interviews because it's what I've been doing every day for a few hours since I was a kid. I've always talked to artists.