Black Sublimated

Sublime Black

The exhibition brings together 18 international artists and the WHU Experience collective, consisting of Moka Sheung Yan Wong, Amanda Du, and Alfred Graselli. The works on display explore concepts of form, reduction, and abstraction in various materials and media.

Kazimir Malevich's Black Square and the Suprematism he founded ushered in a new era of the avant-garde—and with it, abstraction in the visual arts. World War II marked a profound rupture in European art history. It wasn't until the 1950s that new impulses emerged, and from 1960 onward, George Maciunas established a radically new art movement with Fluxus. This movement no longer focused on the work itself, but on the creative idea behind it.
(Yoko Ono, Ben Vautier, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell.)

During this phase, various disciplines were interwoven. Art became the direct vehicle of an all-encompassing concept that rebelled against established categories. Radicality, destructive methods, and metaphors came to the fore. The human body became the surface of artistic expression (Vienna Actionism), while conventions and religious norms were questioned and consciously transgressed—even to the point of deliberately incorporating the obscene as part of the artistic manifesto.

In retrospect, Actionism marks a turning point in the narrative style of art. Transformation became the central narrative.