
“Solo Show”
MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art of Bologna
via Don Minzoni, 14
September 7–November 2, 2008
Curated by Andrea Viliani
Although corporate production models are increasingly synonymous with art-market success, the notion of individual authorship seems strangely intact. But can an artist working today ever honestly claim to produce a solo show? That is the question at the center of this exhibition of work by one fictional Robbie Williams, created (in collaboration, naturally, with an art-production company, mixedmedia berlin) by Berlin-based artist Natascha Sadr Haghighian, whose practice typically aims at destabilizing the rules and formats of institutional representation. “Solo Show”—as well as the accompanying catalogue, which includes essays by critic Tirdad Zolghadr, Haghighian herself, mixedmedia berlin’s Uwe Schwarzer, Viliani, and, of course, Robbie Williams—is split into two sections, the first establishing the myth of the singular creator, the second deconstructing it by making clear the division of labor that characterizes contemporary advanced artistic production.