Projects
English / Deutsch

Gagosian Gallery

The Addiction

Curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers

1.–22.11.2005

With: Markus Amm, John Bock, Roberto Cuoghi, Christian Flamm, Ellen Gronemeyer, Alexander Heim, Richard Hughes, Dorothy Iannone, Gareth Jones, Karsten Konrad, Olaf Metzel, Bernhard Prinz, Anselm Reyle, Thomas Scheibitz, Andreas Slominski, Katja Strunz, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Paloma Varga Weisz, Nicole Wermers, Johannes Wohnseifer

Casting a new light on private obsessions, The Addiction illustrated the secret universes and imaginary places where artists sometimes like to hide. By displaying both, entire collections and a few items or selections, The Addiction documented a series of personal relationships and passionate encounters with everyday objects and curiosities. The exhibition, in fact, did not present art works: The Addiction, instead, was a cabinet of curiosities in which objects of affection, simple artifacts, or precious leftovers had all found a home. Like a peek behind the curtain, The Addiction was a small tour into the private worlds of artists, an exploration of their domestic, hidden side – it’s the workers’ playtime.

In the hands of artists, collecting seems to become both a source of inspiration and a joyful waste of energy or distraction. In some cases the proximity between an artist’s work and his or her collection is quite evident; other times the contrasts are striking, their universes completely unrelated. Collecting, in fact, gives us access to a world in which new connections are created, functions transformed and contexts reframed. Just like the characters in Abel Ferrara’s film The Addiction, the artists in are trapped in an endless quest for their objects of desire. And just as in Ferrara’s movie, they might end up eating themselves alive, consuming their passions in public.