Assistant curator in Vilnius: Virginija Januškevičiūtė
Architecture: Valdas Ozarinskas
Graphic design: Elektrosmog
Artists:
Adel Abdessemed, Pawel Althamer and Artur Žmijewski, Emanuelle Antille, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Marc Bauer with Christine Abbt, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Lonnie van Brummelen with Siebren de Haan, Christoph Büchel, Stefan Burger, Mircea Cantor, David Chieppo, Claire Fontaine, Keren Cytter, Yan Duyvendak, Latifa Echakhch, Al Fadhil, Les Frères Chapuisat, Fucking Good Art, Goran Galić and Gian-Reto Gredig, Thomas Galler, Vidya Gastaldon, Georg Gatsas, Johannes Gees, Ingo Giezendanner aka GRRRR, Bob Gramsma, David Hominal, Huber.Huber, Georg Keller, San Keller, Isabelle Krieg, Jérôme Leuba, Alon Levin, Erik van Lieshout, Beat Lippert, Mark Manders, Aleksandra Mir, Gianni Motti, Shahryar Nashat, Adrian Paci, Mai-Thu Perret, Elodie Pong, Anne-Julie Raccoursier, Pamela Rosenkranz, Vittorio Santoro, Markus Schinwald, Shirana Shahbazi, Nedko Solakov, Loredana Sperini, Jules Spinatsch, Costa Vece, Christian Vetter, Andro Wekua, Jantine Wijnja, Ingrid Wildi
The Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) is pleased to introduce the largest survey of Swiss contemporary art in Vilnius to date.
The initial instalment of Shifting Identities. (Swiss) Art Now was presented in Kunsthaus Zürich in the summer of 2008. Curated by Mirjam Varadinis, it is a sequel to the all-Swiss exhibition organised by the Kunsthaus in 1998. The intervening 10 years, however, have not only opened up new horizons by introducing new practices and artistic concerns, but also have washed away any confidence in the possibility to fairly represent a national art scene: the notions of state, nationality and cultural scene have never yet historically been drifting so far apart.
Vilnius has offered itself as a second venue for the exhibition so that the artworks’ challenge to restriction and promise to transcend can be tested against other walls. With the project Switzerland and Other Islands by Aleksandra Mir, chemical experiments by Pawel Althamer carried out in Poland and in his head, Christoph Büchel’s critique of tolerance and diversity, the unscripted agency of Gianni Motti’s assistants, suspended money flows and proliferating doppelgängers— the exhibition brings together works by more than 50 Swiss and international artists. Core themes subscribe to processes of banned, restricted, constant, sudden, forced, desirable, latent, fearful and menacing transformations of the rules that define the thin lines in reality.
The exhibition is realised with the support of ProHelvetia, Mondriaan Foundation, Culture Support Foundation of Lithuania and our commercial sponsors. We also thank Kunsthaus Zürich, all artists, lenders, the team of CAC and everyone else involved in making this project possible.
