Rirkrit Tiravanija

Opening October 12, 2023

From the start his practice, a critical material for Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961) has been the presence of “a lot of people”—a purposefully broad and expansive term that stands as an open invitation to everyone and anyone, present and future. His largest exhibition to date, Rirkrit Tiravanija: A LOT OF PEOPLE traces four decades of the artist’s career and features over 100 works, from early experimentations with installation and film, to works on paper, photographs, ephemera, sculptures, and newly produced “demonstrations” of key participatory pieces. 

The exhibition includes rarely seen early works that address his experiences as an immigrant with a palpable sense of “otherness” in a Western-centric art world, alongside more recent series that tackle global politics and the quotidian news cycle. Several interactive works will also be on view, along with restagings of five participatory works scheduled at set intervals throughout the run of the exhibition. These happenings will be staged anew in site-specific enactments at MoMA PS1—an experiment in presenting and reconsidering his situational performances. By surveying his practice as a sculptor, filmmaker, traveler, collaborator, and mentor, A LOT OF PEOPLE provides an overview of the striking complexity of Tiravanija’s efforts to “bring people in” to encounter each other and “make less things, but more useful relationships.”

Learn more at MoMA PS1.

The work of Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961, Buenos Aires) will be presented throughout the month of May at various sites in Haus der Kunst, forming a de-centralised exhibition. The exhibition coincides with Toshio Hosokawa’s opera Hanjo, which will be staged in the Westgalerie of Haus der Kunst in collaboration with the Bayerische Staatsoper, for which Tiravanija is creating the stage design. The Opera Hanjo is based on a modern Nō play by the same name written by Yukio Mishima (b. 1915, Tokyo, d. 1970, Tokyo) which was itself inspired by a 14th century play by Zeami Motokiyo. It tells the story of two lovers and explores the borders between dream and reality, between madness and sanity.

Tiravanija’s practice focuses on the artistic production of social engagement, often inviting viewers to inhabit, participate and activate his work, engaging in shared rituals — as with his culinary performances — and actions. Over the course of his thirty-year career, he has also come to incorporate installations, painting, printmaking, video, photography, mixed-media assemblage, and music into his practice, but always with an emphasis on varied cultural spaces and temporalities.

Curated by Emma Enderby with Hanns Lennart Wiesner

The staging of Hanjo by Toshio Hosokawa is a cooperation of Haus der Kunst München and Bayerische Staatsoper.

Learn more at Haus der Kunst.

April 30–August 27, 2022

Over the course of the last two years, Rirkrit Tiravanija traveled several times to the state of Oaxaca to meet and learn from master potters from different regions. During his journeys, he practiced pottery techniques preserved for centuries within local families who have passed their craft down from one generation to the next. With the help and collaboration of Cooperativa 1050º—a cooperative of potters from Oaxaca, Puebla, and Chiapas, and led by Kythzia Barrera—Tiravanija worked on special designs for vases, cups, and other vessels that will be shown in the exhibition Mezcal vs. Pulque at kurimanzutto from April 30 to July 16, 2022, in Mexico City.

During one of his visits to Rio Blanco Tonaltepec with Cooperativa 1050º and its community, Tiravanija discovered an abandoned stone house that became the inspiration for the exhibition. A wooden reproduction of this house resides in the middle of the gallery and serves as an intimate shelter for viewing the pottery pieces created for it. The structure on view at kurimanzutto was built to recall his encounter with this construction in the middle of the Oaxacan landscape, made of fired wooden planks that emanate the burnt smell of the potters’ ovens.

In previous exhibitions, Rirkrit Tiravanija created spatial environments for Asian tea ceremonies where the act of serving allows the participants to pause their regular activities and observe the present moment for the duration of the ritual. For the exhibition in Mexico, the artist wishes to create a similar environment where mezcal and pulque are served in the clay pieces as a means of honoring the two native beverages.

Through a Solidarity Print Sale, contemporary artists from around the world have come together in light of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine to support the nonprofit organization Artists at Risk. Proceeds from the sale, which includes open edition artworks from Rirkrit Tiravanija and Luc Tuymans, will help provide emergency resources, travel aid, and shelter for artists and art workers fleeing Ukraine and other crises, as well as artists in Russia who have been vocal in their opposition and are now facing severe danger.
 
Participating artists have contributed a digital file of their choice to be produced as an open edition at 55 cm x 45 cm by Recom Art in Berlin. The first round of sales closes on April 30, 2022, after which all prints will be mailed.

Artists at Risk has been collaborating with arts nonprofits and government funders since 2013 to assist artists politically at risk and fleeing oppression and war. 

To learn more and shop the sale, visit Solidarity Prints.

April 21, 2021 – David Zwirner is pleased to announce that the gallery will be working with Rirkrit Tiravanija. His first solo exhibition of new work is planned for spring 2022 at the Hong Kong location.

Opening in May 2021, Tiravanija’s untitled 1990 (pad thai), a seminal early work, will be presented at the Hong Kong gallery as part of a group exhibition. First enacted at the Paula Allen Gallery, New York, in 1990, untitled 1990 (pad thai) was the artist’s first live participatory installation. For the work, he prepared and served food to visitors and then gathered the remnants of the meal as evidence of the event.

In 2007, David Zwirner presented an iteration of Tiravanija’s untitled (free). First exhibited at the 303 Gallery space at 89 Greene Street in 1992, the work involved Tiravanija turning the original gallery’s office space into a kitchen where Thai curry was cooked and served to visitors. At David Zwirner, Tiravanija re-created the spatial dimensions of 89 Greene Street out of plywood and proceeded to have curry prepared once again, while also displaying the remnants of the original presentation as a kind of record of the event. The work is now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Of collaborating with Tiravanija, David Zwirner says, “Rirkrit Tiravanija is a longtime friend. I have known him as long as I have had a gallery, and have been collecting his work since the early 1990s. Rirkrit is a transformational artist. Relational art would not be what it is without his immense influence. His work is about connection, community, and shared experiences. I think after this past year in which there has been so much disconnection and separation, his art is even more important and meaningful.” 

Image: Installation view, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled 1992 (Free), 1992–2007, David Zwirner New York, 2007

May 17–July 24, 2019

Rirkrit Tiravanija: (who’s afraid of red, yellow, and green) is the Hirshhorn’s first-ever exhibition of works by contemporary Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija. Organized by Mark Beasley, the museum’s Robert and Arlene Kogod Secretarial Scholar, Curator of Media and Performance Art, the exhibition transforms the Hirshhorn’s galleries into a communal dining space in which visitors are served curry and invited to share a meal together. The installation includes a large-scale mural, drawn on the walls over the course of the exhibition, which references protests against Thai government policies. Additional historic images spoke to protest and the present. The exhibition also includes a series of documentary shorts curated exclusively for the Hirshhorn by Thailand’s leading independent filmmaker and Palme d’Or prize-winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul in collaboration with the artist. Tiravanija’s presentation unites his signature communal food-based work with his ongoing series of drawings derived from protest imagery, creating a unique dialogue within a single installation.

June 7–October 7, 2018

Rirkrit Tiravanija's Untitled (lunch box) is a conceptual work that involves inviting randomly selected visitors to share a Thai takeaway meal in the gallery space. The meal consists of pork satay, green papaya salad, chicken yellow curry, and rice, as specified by the artist.

Tiravanija is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Since the 1990s, he has based much of his art around the idea of creating social spaces and platforms for instruction and discussion. His works have taken various forms, including performances, teaching, readings, broadcasting music, cooking, and sharing meals. They are associated with the concept of "relational aesthetics," a term coined in the 1990s by French curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud, who defines it as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space." To put it simply, as Tiravanija has stated, "it is not what you see that is important but what takes place between people."

March 21–May 27, 2018

Democ­racy appears to be in crisis; the post-demo­c­ratic era has already dawned. The symp­toms are mani­fold: populist leaders, fake news, auto­cratic back­lash, total­i­tarian propa­ganda, neolib­er­alism. However, tendencies toward a re-politi­cized society have been palpable for some time now. Artists, too, are increas­ingly raising objec­tions. They create works that they see as instru­ments of crit­i­cism and which expressly pursue polit­ical inten­tions.

In a major exhi­bi­tion, the SCHIRN brings together artistic posi­tions which can be read as seis­mo­graphs of contem­po­rary polit­ical activity. It focuses on funda­mental issues and the exam­i­na­tion of the phenomena and possi­bil­i­ties of polit­ical partic­i­pa­tion. The works call polit­ical posi­tions into ques­tion, illus­trate forms of protest, and set their sights on artistic involve­ment. Instal­la­tions, photographs, videos, paint­ings, and sculp­tures docu­ment the erosion of demo­c­ratic achieve­ments and the active pressure of the new mass move­ments. They analyze discourses on domi­nance and noncon­formist inter­jec­tions, develop strate­gies of oppo­si­tion, and reflect the imag­i­na­tive ways of the new protest culture.

Artists: Halil Altındere, Phyl­lida Barlow, Guil­laume Bijl, Julius von Bismarck, Andrea Bowers, Osman Bozkurt, Tobias Donat, Sam Durant, Omer Fast, Mark Flood, Foren­sic Archi­tec­ture, Dani Gal, Katie Holten, Adel­ita Husni-Bey, Hiwa K, Edgar Lecie­je­w­ski, Jona­than Monk, Ahmet Öğüt, Ricarda Roggan, Mari­nella Sena­tore, Rirkrit Tira­va­nija, Nasan Tur, Jens Ullrich

January 24–October 28, 2018

Critically-acclaimed artist Rirkrit Tiravanija presents untitled 2018 (the infinite dimensions of smallness), the second showcase of the Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission series. This site-specific installation consists of a large-scale bamboo maze with a Japanese tea house at its center. Drawing on regional materials, architecture, and traditions, it embraces Tiravanija’s interest in cross-disciplinary and collaborative art practice. Within the space, visitors are invited to encounter each other and participate in interactive programs including tea ceremonies by local and international tea masters.

October 28, 2016–February 5, 2017

Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016 focuses on the ways in which artists have dismantled and reassembled the conventions of cinema—screen, projection, darkness—to create new experiences of the moving image. The exhibition’s title refers to the science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft’s alternate fictional dimension, whose terrain of cities, forests, mountains, and an underworld can be visited only through dreams. Similarly, the spaces in Dreamlands will connect different historical moments of cinematic experimentation, creating a story that unfolds across a series of immersive spaces.

The exhibition will be the most technologically complex project mounted in the Whitney’s new building to date, embracing a wide range of moving image techniques, from hand-painted film to the latest digital technologies. The works on view use color, touch, music, spectacle, light, and darkness to confound expectations, flattening space through animation and abstraction, or heightening the illusion of three dimensions.

Dreamlands spans more than a century of works by American artists and filmmakers, and also includes a small number of works of German cinema and art from the 1920s with a strong relationship to, and influence on, American art and film. Featured are works in installation, drawing, 3-D environments, sculpture, performance, painting, and online space, by Trisha Baga, Ivana Bašić, Nuotama Frances Bodomo, Dora Budor, Ian Cheng, Bruce Conner, Ben Coonley, Joseph Cornell, Andrea Crespo, François Curlet, Alex Da Corte, Oskar Fischinger, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Huyghe, Alex Israel, Mehdi Belhaj Kacem and Pierre Joseph, Aidan Koch, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Anthony McCall, Josiah McElheny, Syd Mead, Lorna Mills, Jayson Musson, Melik Ohanian, Philippe Parreno, Jenny Perlin, Mathias Poledna, Edwin S. Porter, Oskar Schlemmer, Hito Steyerl, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Stan VanDerBeek, Artie Vierkant, and Jud Yalkut, among others.

June 4–June 26, 2016

Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija invites viewers to play a relaxing game of ping pong as part of his interactive art installation, Tomorrow is the Question. Using social interaction as his starting point, Tiravanija creates encounters in which the audience is given an active role. In his characteristic, humorous way, he presents his radical views on the established forms of exhibition and their conventions, supplanting them with a more theatrical, social, and even cozy experience, preferably situated outside of traditional exhibition venues and as accessible as possible. According to Tiravanija, “It is not what you see that is important, but what takes place between people.”

Setting up a cluster of ping pong tables on Museumplein, Tiravanija aims to seduce his audience into taking part—to play a game of ping pong or watch others play. Through his work, he stages social and intimate encounters between people. The usually passive public is encouraged to become active participants. Tiravanija has blurred the boundaries between public and private before, serving green curry to gallery visitors, drinking tea with people visiting a reconstruction of his apartment, or giving away printed T-shirts. He also famously built an enormous picnic table for his audience to sit down and collectively complete a jigsaw puzzle. In The Land (1999–ongoing), he invites people to a piece of wasteland in Thailand to realize their personal artistic, agricultural, or social projects. Tiravanija’s mission is to make contemporary art accessible and blur the boundaries between artist and audience. In Tomorrow is the Question, Tiravanija once again challenges the boundaries between art and life.