Cabinet Piece: Variations

13 May – 4 September 2016

A variation in music is the alteration or ornamentation of a musical theme. Variations on a melody, rhythm or harmony make for a tension-filled merger of the familiar and the unknown. It furthermore reveals the infinite diversity of the inventive possibilities that accompany and challenge every creative process. The motif of the variation in art can often be found in albums of abstract prints, for example Max Bill’s ‘Quinze variations sur un même thème’. Like the musical variation, individual compositional elements are varied and rearranged from print to print. This is similarly true for albums by Camille Graeser, Rudolf Jahns, Attila Kovács and Leon Polk Smith on display in conjunction with the Cabinet Piece Exhibition.

Curator: Nina Schallenberg