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«Can You Feel It?» at Last Tango

, November 15, 2019 until January 11, 2020

Artists

Cécile Feilchenfeldt, D’Ette Nogle, General Idea, Hannah Parr, Manon, Martin Beck, Mathieu Dafflon, Mélodie Mousset, Milda Lembertaitė and Amelia Prazak, Nan Goldin, Ursula Hodel, Vaginal Davis, William Wegman, Yuki Higashino

Institution

Last Tango

Location

Zurich

Download

Press release (PDF)

Website

lasttango.info

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Mélodie Mousset, Organs, 2018 and Pattern for hysterical change, 2017» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Matthieu Dafflon, Les pieds sur terre, 2018» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Vaginal Davis, Cholita!, 1995, directed by Michelle Mills; Vaginal Davis, The Last Club Sucker, 1999, directed by Vaginal Davis» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and Dan Gunn Gallery

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Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Milda Lembertaitė and Cécile Feilchenfeldt» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Manon, La Dame au Crâne Rasé, 1977/8» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and ProLitteris

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Ursula Hodel, Shame on You (24 coats), 2002» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Ursula Hodel and Manon» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Can You Feel It? is an exhibition exploring staging and the staging of others through a variety of approaches be it portraiture, theatricality, private reality, shape-shifting identities, and collective bodies. Some of the works make us ponder about our encouraged culture of spectacle wherein artists have confronted the absurd idea of placing high value on our image with enigma, irony and satire. In the Gaga-Abramović-Kimye age with performative, fabricated (and online) personalities is staging a source of empowerment or rather supporting problematic idolatry and creating oversized egos?

Staging is looked at as an architectural, cultural and social space for identity searching. Featured are positions that relate closely to cultures of the night and DIY culture be it house and dance music havens in New York City, homo-core punk movements in Los Angeles or campy “fake” pageantry contests in Toronto. Our exhibition space as a former illegal techno night club fittingly acts as a site. We come to see reactionary stances and subversive strategies in the attempt to renegotiate the politics of representation. The exhibition also lays bare the potentially seducing and the sometimes deviantly violent sides of styling.

Several positions undermine the authority of norms by confronting them with irony, self-reflexivity or an anti-glamour attitude. Others question the influence of technology on the self and self-care. A handful demonstrate a wish to masquerade with cryptic or apparent layers of personal narratives enmeshed within the work. Some satisfy our voyeuristic desires and relate to identity linked with a performance for the camera. While various positions posit an openness towards others or receptivity towards the ideas behind the exhibition. The idea of gender relations spans throughout. And in questioning, curious and distanced ways a masculine presence or celebrated male figures are apparent in various of the works.

The title of the show Can You Feel It? is a 1986 house track by Mr. Fingers which was a trailblazer for the deep house scene. The curators were marked by artist Luis Jacob’s commentary on this track: “Intrinsically, we are even ‚other‘ to ourselves! Look at our unconscious. Look, even, at the many ‚selves‘ we become throughout the course of our lives...The classic house songs are various theses about... togetherness and alienation, created by black and often gay musicians... That is the thesis of house: that house is not a thing, certainly it is not a building, but rather house is a joyous, interpersonal experience.”

The Materials Section in the exhibition features video clips, zines, magazines, and publications exploring the crossovers between the fashion industry and the art world and touches on topics such as publicity, the reproduction of luxury culture, being centre stage, style, trash elegance, icy eroticism, glamour, image-making as well the creative and musical legacies of the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Manon, La Dame au Crâne Rasé, 1977/8» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and ProLitteris

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on General Idea, P is for Poodle, 1983» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Hannah Parr, Great hair, 2019» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Vaginal Davis, Bothwell Browne as Miss Jack, 2018; Ray Bourbon alias, Ramo‘n Icarus, 2018; Yankee Doodle Berlina, 2018; Moms and Pigmeat, 2018; Miss Bandana, 2018; Karyl Norman’s Beside a Bubbling Brook, 2018» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and Dan Gunn Gallery

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Vaginal Davis, Yankee Doodle Berlina, 2018» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and Dan Gunn Gallery

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Vaginal Davis, Moms and Pigmeat, 2018» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and Dan Gunn Gallery

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Vaginal Davis, Karyl Norman’s Beside a Bubbling Brook, 2018» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and Dan Gunn Gallery

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Manon, Polaroid, 1974/2015» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and ProLitteris

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Martin Beck, Yuki Higashino and D‘Ette Nogle» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on D‘Ette Nogle, Untitled (The Moment I Realized My Hair Was Getting in the Way of My Art Practice), (Unrealized 2007), Somewhat Realized (Lighter), 2009, (Exhumed from Suspended Projection, 2009; Printed, 2019), 2019» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and Hannah Hoffman Gallery

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Yuki Higashino, Notebook 1, 2019» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on General Idea and Hannah Parr» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Martin Beck, The Same Thing Can be Done in Different Ways, 2019» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and 47 Canal

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on D‘Ette Nogle, Stand Up, 2019» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / © the artist / Courtesy: the artist, Last Tango and Hannah Hoffman Gallery

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Mélodie Mousset, Pattern for hysterical change, 2017» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Yuki Higashino, Noise 1, 2019 and At Kramladen, 19.01.19» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Yuki Higashino, At Kramladen, 19.01.19» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Yuki Higashino, Noise 1» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Mélodie Mousset, Organs, 2018» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Mélodie Mousset, Organs, 2018» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Matthieu Dafflon, Les pieds sur terre, 2018» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Cécile Feilchenfeldt, NINJA TURTLE, 2017» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Milda Lembertaitė, Bulky, 2019» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Nan Goldin, Roommate as Napoleon, New Year’s Eve, NYC, 1980» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on General Idea, File Megazines ed. by General Idea, AA Bronson, Jorge Zontal and Felix Partz Special General Idea Issue: Vol. 5, No. 4 (1983) with Mondo Cane Kama Sutra; Mondo Nudo Issue, Vol. 2, No. 4 (December 1973); Glamour Issue, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Fall 1975); Special Global Downtown Issue, Vol. 4, No. 3, Summer 1980, offset-printed» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on William Wegman, Self-portrait, 1971 and Avalanche [Man Ray / William Wegman Cover] / No. 7 (1973) ed. by Willoughby Sharp & Liza Béar» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on Jeff Koons and Cicciolina with Gran Fury members at the Venice Biennale in 1990» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?; view on VD as VB - Erdgeist, Earth Spirit #27-29 10827, Kapelica gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia June 21, 2007» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Groupshow «Can You Feel It?» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2019 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango