Simone Forti at Museum der Moderne Salzburg

The exhibition Simone Forti. Thinking with the Body: A Retrospective in Motion at Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, Austria, presents a comprehensive retrospective of the work of the artist Simone Forti. Forti describes herself as a “movement artist”. Her solo show at Museum der Moderne provides an overview of her broad creative range as artist, choreographer, dancer, and writer. On display are Simone Forti’s sculptures, drawings, works with holograms and sound, and videos. Her Dance Constructions and other performance pieces such as Huddle, Hangers, Accompaniment for LMY, Rollers, Slant Board, Censor, and Platforms are being enacted in the museum and in public spaces in Salzburg by students at the SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance) during the duration of the exhibition, which runs until September 11, 2014. This video documents some pieces that were performed at the opening reception of the exhibition on July 26, 2014.

The exhibition is curated by Sabine Breitwieser (Director, Museum der Moderne), with Katja Mittendorfer-Oppolzer (Curatorial Assistant, Museum der Moderne).

Simone Forti. Mit dem Körper denken: Eine Retrospektive in Bewegung. Museum der Moderne Mönchsberg, Salzburg (Austria), Opening, July 26, 2014.

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Full-length video (10:04):

Excerpt from the press release:

“I am interested in what we know about things through our bodies,” says Simone Forti, who was born in Florence in 1935 but has mostly lived in Los Angeles since 1938, with extended stays in New York and other places. The exhibition presents the first comprehensive retrospective of the seminal work of this influential artist, choreographer, dancer, and writer. In addition to numerous performances, many of them presented in live enactments, Forti’s sculptures, drawings, works with holograms and sound, and videos demonstrate her strikingly broad creative range. She is regarded as a key figure in postmodern dance and pioneer of Minimal art—she personally likes to describe herself as a “movement artist.”
In a sustained engagement with kinesthetic awareness and composition, gleaned from her mentors dancers Anna Halprin and John Cage scholar Robert Dunn, Simone Forti dedicated herself to experimentation and improvisation. Collaboration with other artists, including musicians such as Charlemagne Palestine and Peter Van Riper, has been another mainstay of her artistic practice. In the early 1960s, together with dancers including Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer, she revolutionized the idea of dance and performance art by introducing movements from everyday life. In Huddle, one of her most popular works, a group of performers form a sculpture that focuses and expresses their aggregate forces. Among Simone Forti’s best-known works are minimalist objects made of simple materials, the famous Dance Constructions (1960-61), which she first presented in New York. In the late 1960s—Forti, who lived near the zoo in Rome at the time—began to develop performance pieces out of the movements of animals. In her most recent works, the News Animations, she includes spoken words in her dance, to reflect current events.

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