DAVIDE CASCIO AND PETER STÄMPFLI: JAMES BOND & PIN-UPS

With the exhibition Davide Cascio and Peter Stämpfli: James Bond & Pin-Ups, the Kunstmuseum Thun brings together two artists from different generations who are both committed in their own way to Pop Art and the ideas of the 1960s and 1970s. Using various media such as painting, film, collage, and installation, they explore the utopias, obsessions, and desires of this era from different temporal perspectives.

The name of the exhibition James Bond & Pin-Ups fires the imagination: it conjures up images of rapid-fire exchanges, passionate nights of love, voluptuous curves, and shaken or stirred drinks. But the exhibition in Thun is about much more than that. The two Swiss artists Peter Stämpfli (born in 1937 in Deisswil, BE) and Davide Cascio (born in 1976 in Lugano, TI) are separated by more than a generation. But there is one interest that connects them: a fascination with the ideas of the (consumer) society of the 1960s and 1970s. The symbols mentioned in the exhibition title represent the obsessions, desires, and longings of the time; they also refer to the names of works by the artists. The Kunstmuseum Thun has invited the two artists to enter into a dialogue. Peter Stämpfli is one of the few Swiss pop art artists who has also enjoyed significant international success. While his works from the 1960s and 1970s provide insight into the spirit of the times, the younger Davide Cascio’s view of the era in his work is more retrospective and connected to the here and now.

Peter Stämpfli
Similar to the American representatives of Pop Art, Peter Stämpfli drew on the world of consumerism in his early works from the 1960s. His large-format, always flatly painted pictures show objects from the sphere of everyday modern life, enriched with a little pleasure or comfort, such as cigarettes, washbasins, refrigerators, or bottles. He took the motifs from advertisements in magazines, but always refrained from naming the brands of the products. Painted against a neutral background, the artist places the objects at the center of attention, thereby giving them a certain elevation, which is simultaneously relativized by the cool color scheme.
Peter Stämpli’s fascination with the subject of “cars” is evident throughout his work. Since 1969, his interest in this object of desire from the 1960s has been radically apparent in his work. From this moment on, his attention has been focused exclusively on this theme, or more precisely, on one aspect of it—namely, car tires and the tracks left by their treads. In his more recent works, he examines this so closely that the reference to the whole disappears and the object dissolves into a geometric abstraction.

Davide Cascio
The idea of a reference system connecting all things is important to Davide Cascio’s artistic work. His works are characterized by complex references, without distinguishing between “high” and “low.” He contrasts multi-layered architectural, design, literary, and social concepts with utopian potential with the world of desire and consumption, creating far-reaching spaces for thought that are sometimes even accessible.
In Davide Cascio’s collages, the recurring use of magazines from the 1960s and 1970s and the design language of that time is particularly striking. He distorts photographs of women looking seductively into the camera with images of gemstones, flowers, or feathers, and photographs of modern interiors with futuristic forms. Especially in combination with his installation or sculptural objects, they reflect the need for the most harmonious existence and living space possible, while at the same time raising the question of what remains of past utopias.

A catalog (German/English) with numerous illustrations and contributions by Dr. Tobias Lander, Guido Magnaguagno, and an introduction by Helen Hirsch is being published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg to accompany the exhibition.

The exhibition and catalog are supported by the Ernst and Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation.