Double Vision: The Poetic Focus of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

3 Oct — 27 Oct 2007

Waddington Galleries, London will present the major exhibition
Double Vision: The Poetic Focus of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen from 3-27 October. The sculpture French Horns, Unwound and Entwined, 2005, will be on separate display as part of Frieze Sculpture Garden, 11-14 October.

The exhibition will feature important works from the past 40 years. It includes one of Claes Oldenburg’s earliest sculptures Fan-Hard Model, 1965-66 and key Oldenburg/van Bruggen pieces from the 1980s such as From the Entropic Library-Model, 1980-89 and Monument to the Last Horse, 1989-90, the large-scale version of which was commissioned by Donald Judd and donated by the artists to the Chinati Foundation. A suite of musical works span 1992 to 2005 and comprise ‘soft sculptures’ such as Soft Saxophone, Scale A, Muslin, 1992; Silent Metronome, 16 inch, Version Three, 2005; ‘hard’ sculptures such as Tied Trumpet, 2004, and rarely seen drawings. Key food pieces on display include Leaning Fork with Meatball and Spaghetti III, 1994 and Blueberry Pie à la Mode, Flying, Scale A, 1996. Soft Shuttlecock, Study, 1994, will also be exhibited, of which the large version was specifically created for the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen have worked together since 1976 after meeting at Sonsbeek 71, where Oldenburg exhibited the 41-foot tall Trowel I and van Bruggen co-edited the exhibition catalogue. They were married in 1977 and have continued their artistic collaboration for over 25 years. Their iconic projects often blur the line between architecture, art and theatre. They have executed more then 40 permanently sited, architecturally scaled, sculptures throughout America, Europe, and Japan. These include Spoonbridge and Cherry (1988), Minneapolis; Mistos (Match Cover) (1992), Barcelona; Shuttlecocks (1994), Kansas City; Saw, Sawing (1996), Tokyo; Ago, Filo e Nodo (Needle, Thread and Knot) (2000), Milan; and the 40-foot-high Dropped Cone (2001) on top of the Neumarkt Galerie in Cologne, Germany. Their collaboration has also encompassed smaller park and garden sculptures in addition to indoor installations.

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929, Stockholm) grew up in Chicago and attended
Yale University (1946-50) before settling permanently in New York City in 1956. Influenced by the Lower East Side environs he created a series of performances and installations such as The Street (1960) and The Store (1961) that established his reputation as a key figure in the Pop Art movement. From the mid-1960s he began to focus on specific objects, developing ‘soft’ sculpture and proposals for colossal civic monuments. In 1969 his iconic Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, was installed at Yale University. In 1976 Oldenburg created a 45-foot tall sculpture of a Clothespin in downtown Philadelphia, his first work to be realised to such a fantastic scale.

Coosje van Bruggen (b. 1942, The Netherlands) gained a master’s degree in art history before working in the curatorial department of the Stedelijk Museum from 1967-71. She was a member of the selection committee for Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany (1982); a contributor to Artforum (1983-88); and Senior Critic in the Department of Sculpture at Yale University School of Art (1996-97). She has also written books on Claes Oldenburg's early work and on John Baldessari, Hanne Darboven, Bruce Nauman, and the architect Frank O. Gehry, among others.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's work can be found in numerous public collections including: The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; the Dallas Museum of Art, TX; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia; the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Tate Gallery, London; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and
the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen live and work in New York but have been travelling to Los Angeles to work on a 64 foot high sculpture for Walt Disney Concert Hall by the architect Frank O. Gehry’s – a model of which is in the exhibition. The artists are also working on a large-scale work for a sculpture park in the Norwegian countryside and another for the Indianapolis Museum of Art.