Hyper Real

Under the title ‘Hyper Real’ the MUMOKwill examine the passion for the real in painting and photography from the late1960s to this day. Among the around 250 works, many of the most importantPhotorealist paintings will be shown in a nostalgic and amusing look at thisimportant chapter in international art history.

The Photorealists - Chroniclersof the American Way of Life At the end of the 1960s, a group of Americanartists attracted a considerable amount of attention with their realisticpaintings based in meticulous detail on photographs. They became chroniclers ofthe American way of life during the late 1960s and early 1970s, capturing imagesof everyday life in still lifes, portraits, interiors and cityscapes. Shiningchrome road cruisers, bright and colorful shop windows and scenes from suburbanlife were among their characteristic themes. These often unspectacularsnapshots, amateur photographs and newspaper clippings were transformed intomonumental pictures - often with the help of slide projectors. Details such asreflections and other light or shadow effects were accentuated. Althoughspecifically in tune with America, the pictures were also self-consciously apart of the European history of painting, with their attention to traditionalpainterliness continuing the tradition of figurative modernism. Deception,illusionism, and other controversial aspects of representation came to bediscussed with respect to painting and its history.

Pop Art as Inspiration and Point of Departure Along withtheir contemporaries in Pop Art, the Photorealists looked more openly at theworld of popular culture and merchandise, working consciously in contrast tothe extreme subjectivity and emotionalism of Abstract Expressionism. Many ofthe Photorealists explicitly referred to Pop Art as an inspiration and a pointof departure. In the exhibition, prominent works by Roy Lichtenstein, JamesRosenquist, Andy Warhol and Tom Wesselmann are presented in contrast to worksby the protagonists of Hyperrealism such as Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, RobertBechtle, Malcolm Morley, Don Eddy, Robert Cottingham, Richard McLean and ChuckClose. To complement this, photography from the same2 period between the 1960sand 1970s by Saul Leiter, Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz and William Egglestonwill be shown. At the same time, American positions will be contrasted toEuropean positions with works by Gerhard Richter, Domenico Gnoli, Jean OlivierHucleux or Richard Hamilton.

TheContrast between Painting and Photography The exhibition looks into the historyof the interrelationship of painting and photography up into the present,presenting numerous important international positions. With Jeff Wall as thepoint of departure, the show then continues to some of the big names ofcontemporary German photography: Candida Höfer, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff andThomas Struth. Their presence opens the exhibition to other positions withinthe broad field of contemporary realism in art.