Docking Station

This exciting app accompanies you on your tour of the exhibition Docking Station, on view at Aargauer Kunsthaus from 23 August to 16 November 2014. Images, descriptive texts, video portraits of the participating artists, links, and additional information can turn your visit to the museum into an interactive event. After visiting the show, you can use the app to engage more deeply with the exhibition.

Contents:
• Video portraits of participating artists make it possible to experience the thoughts of the artists that were behind these works. In interviews, the artists explain their approach and their interest in historical art. Studio shots show the works in the exhibition in the process of creation.
• Introduction to the exhibition concept with video statements by the curators of the collections at Aargauer Kunsthaus and Nationale Suisse
• Illustrations of the works shown (installation views and individual photographs of the works)
• Brief texts on the projects of the participating artists
• Information and links on the contemporary artists
• Illustrations and texts on the historical works shown
• Information on events
• Information on Nationale Suisse’s commitment to art
• General information on Aargauer Kunsthaus

For the exhibition Docking Station contemporary artists were invited to work with historical artworks from the collections of the Aargauer Kunsthaus and the insurance company Nationale Suisse. In pieces created especially for this show the artists respond to selected artworks from said collections, thereby creating a varied exhibition arrangement on the upper floor of the Aargauer Kunsthaus – in the galleries usually reserved for the historical part of the museum’s collection – that reveals the freshness and richness an artistically motivated «look back» can exude.

The meshing of contemporary and historical art is based on the keen awareness young artists tend to have of their own predecessors and pioneers. Art and cultural history serve as a source of inspiration and this is in keeping with the endeavour of the Aargauer Kunsthaus to forge links between historical and contemporary art and maintain active access to its collection. For ten years now our partner in this project, the Nationale Suisse insurance company, which specialises in art insurance, has been promoting young artists who are at the beginning of their careers through an art prize. The company also owns an extensive collection of Swiss art, which is celebrating its seventy-year anniversary. These two anniversaries gave reason to the cooperation with the Aargauer Kunsthaus and to the exhibition Docking Station, which offers visitors a unique opportunity to discover two top-class collections of Swiss art through the lens of contemporary artistic work.

Artists
Marc Bauer (b. 1975), Bianca Brunner (b. 1974), Philippe Decrauzat (b. 1974), Klodin Erb (b. 1963), San Keller (b. 1971), Petra Köhle (b. 1977) / Nicolas Vermot Petit-Outhenin (b. 1977), Zilla Leutenegger (b. 1968), Michael Meier (b. 1980) & Christoph Franz (b. 1982), Giacomo Santiago Rogado (b. 1979), Francisco Sierra (b. 1977)

Historical Works
Eva Aeppli (b. 1925), Cuno Amiet (1868-1961), Albert Anker (1831-1910), Karl Ballmer (1891-1958), Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), Ferdinand Hodler (1853 – 1918), Ernst Morgenthaler (1887 – 1962), Meret Oppenheim (1913 – 1985), Félix Vallotton (1865 – 1925), Caspar Wolf (1735 – 1783), et al.