Collecting Lines

After "Blasted Allegories" (2008 at the Kunstmuseum Luzern), "Collecting Lines" was the second public presentation of the Ringier Collection. The Ringier Collection brings together a wide range of contemporary art positions in photography, video, painting, drawing, objects, and installations since the late 1960s. The collecting activity, which has no national or media orientation, focuses particularly on collecting groups of works by the artists represented and giving the works public exposure on company premises and through extensive loans to exhibitions, institutions, and museums. * * Drawings are a core element of the collection. The collection of works on paper by the early Russian and Western European avant-garde, begun by the spouses Ellen and Michael Ringier back in the 1980s, has been consistently extended over the past 20 years by collecting body of works spanning from early Conceptual artists like John Baldessari, Douglas Huebler, Vito Acconci, Robert Barry, Joseph Kosuth, and Allighiero Boetti to oeuvres by leading contemporary artists like John Armleder, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Matt Mullican, Urs Fischer, Jim Shaw, Richard Phillips, Mike Kelley, Karen Kilimnik, Jack Pierson, Joe Bradley, Wade Guyton, Trisha Donnelly, Lutz Bacher, and Rosemarie Trockel among many others. Many of the artists represented in the collection have explored drawn formats extensively, questioning its status and conceiving new forms of the "dessin." * * The publication documents the two chapters of the exhibition, curated by Beatrix Ruf and Arthur Fink at Villa Flora in 2015.