A fence is a window as much as barrier, though also a signifier or symbol, depending on the type. In this season, chain link fences were also a backdrop for various fashion labels, as if in unison of collective conscience. Sport as a field for leisure, for competition, traced by rules of the game, but fields also have a way of interacting with the space around, institutes in institutes – let’s play!

G-A-E-A-U-L-E-N-T-I how do you say it? She, she was a famous Italian architect! But the table was found on ebay for a steal. It is a ‘Monument’ for those on wheels. What no one mentioned is the leather jackets in JACKET PANELS are inspired by a picture of Judith Butler, she picks nice jackets, and these may fall, bodiless and full of folds.

Around the corner guided by stripes. Daniel Buren is recognized, but the windows are winking in the streets of Bern, what are the details that still can say ‘awning’? These might be more folds, shrouds of radiators in a historical milieu for the conceptual artists, or shading from sun, like at ‘Wannsee’. The paintings all refer to the series of the Bathers by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906). Bodies that are languid and erotic, alien and morphing with the scenery. Do you like boys or girls? In this case it hardly matters, inverted in tones that displace pretexted settings, but still maintain to be ‘compositions’ of oil on canvas.

In the exhibition The Unanswered Question, Megan Francis Sullivan shows new and older works in a specific setting that refers to structures both inside and outside the Kunsthalle. Aspects of the existing architecture are set in relation to works or objects that themselves possess architectural functions. The exchange between forms and functions, inside and outside, materiality and symbolism, thus becomes the actual starting point. Within the exhibition space, the artist shuffles seemingly disparate references from areas of art history, design, pop culture and sport. The process of combining found or bought objects, works made by order, or those created by the artist in the studio emphasizes frameworks that not only make artistic objects visible, but assign them certain meanings or values. Sullivan’s works are formed through techniques like adaptation or inversion that serve to infiltrate the original with subjective, sometimes queer or melancholy perspectives.

The title of the exhibition, The Unanswered Question, refers to the music piece written by the American composer Charles Ives (1874-1954), also born in Connecticut. His work is often called ‘quirky’, though he is celebrated as a modern composer who juxtaposed different conventional styles within single compositions. About this piece, Leonard Bernstein quotes Ives as saying that while the trumpet “intones the perennial question of existence”, the flutes “seem to realize the futility and begin to mock the question”. With different voices, Sullivan traces iridescent systems of reference in which innuendo, anecdote or analysis all take turns.

Works by Megan Francis Sullivan (born 1975 in Stamford, CT, USA, lives in Berlin) have recently been presented at Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2015), Mathew Gallery, New York (2015), Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2014), Mathew Gallery, Berlin (2014), VI, VII, Oslo (2014), Freymond-Guth Fine Arts, Zurich (2013), Castillo/Corrales, Paris (2013), Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg (2013). Her artist books and publications include: A Catalogue Raisonné, Antwerp: Objectif Exhibitions, 2016; Zipper Keeper 2015, Minneapolis: Midway Contemporary Art, 2014; Die Hunterklasse, Maastricht: FNVerlag / Jan van Eyck Academie, 2008; HBL – Hedgebrook Lane, Frankfurt am Main: Revolver Verlag, 2004.

Kunsthalle Bern would like to thank the city of Berne and the Confederation for their generous support.
The exhibition was supported by the No Leftovers-Fonds.