Re-Object, Vol. 1

Urinals, vacuum cleaners, basketballs, glass sheets livestock? This study of key moments in the history of ready-made and object-based art features Damien Hirst (London), Gerhard Merz (Munich), Jeff Koons (New York) and their shared historical point of reference, Marcel Duchamp (Paris and New York, 1887-1968). Recently a poll of 500 British critics called Duchamp's 1917 Fountain the most influential Modern artwork ever created. Even more recently, a man assaulted it with a hammer at the Centre Pompidou, confirming that, nearly a century later, emotions are still running high. Object-based art, which grew into a major twentieth-century trend and continues today, took its cue from the ready-made, and Re-Object explores the continuation and transformation of both lines in contemporary artistic practice, via large-format photographs and analytical essays on the artists.

Damien Hirst dominated the British art scene of the 1990s. The leading figure of the YBAs (Young British Artists), he has become one of the best known British artists of the later 20th Century. Hirst has exhibited his work worldwide including at the Gagosian Gallery, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; MFA Boston; White Cube, London, and the Dallas Museum, Texas, among many others.

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1955. The former Wall Street commodities broker rose to prominence in the mid-80s and has been the subject of numerous solo museum exhibitions, such as those seen at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Bilbao Guggenheim, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Koons currently lives in New York.

Eckard Schneider is the Director of the Kunsthaus Bregenz.