ART IN A SYNTHETIC AGE, Moderna Museet 2018
In the collage and assemblage of early modernism disparate materials were brought together in works that combined found objects with elements of painting and sculpture. The information technologies of our own era are making different possibilities available and the range of media images on offer is very much greater. The art works in this room are all relatively new additions to the collection of Moderna Museet. One place to start might be Michel Majerus’ enormous picture Gewinn (2000), which uses painterly fragments and elements of popular culture to create a sort of painting for the digital era.
New techniques are changing the conditions in which art is created. Newspaper cuttings were a frequent feature of the collages that the Cubists created a century ago. The logic of mass production was forcing its way into art. Today the Internet provides access to an infinite variety of information and images. In our daily lives we are surrounded by new artificial materials and the boundary between the natural and the artificial can sometimes be difficult to define. Is the gaze always filtered through
the lens of the media? Are we products of today’s technologies? This is
art made in a synthetic age.
Daniel Birnbaum, överintendent/director
Ann-Sofi Noring, vice museichef/co-director
