Mistakes occur, mishaps happen, things get damaged, many things remain unfinished or provisional. Imperfection accompanies our lives and we learn to deal with it through different strategies. Even in creative processes, in the material world and in productions, imperfection itself and its consequences are extremely diverse - from a flaw that unexpectedly defines a valuable one-off to a ruinous production error or a failed construction project.
HB Südwest, Zurich: Long-standing large-scale project failed at the ballot box after a referendum. Poster by Raymond Naef, 1988, Swiss Social Archives © Swiss Social Archives
With the exhibition "Perfectly Imperfect", the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur explores the tension between perfection and deviation and addresses the qualities of the supposedly flawed, the significance of the unfinished, the patina of the ephemeral or the art of repair. It is critically dedicated to a striving for quality that cannot be fulfilled or is deliberately and creatively undermined. In creative processes and in our immediate living environment, the balance between a necessary or supposed demand for perfection and dealing with apparent and serious mistakes turns out to be complex. So the question arises: when is something even perfect? What is the value of apparent shortcomings? Wrong decisions or carelessness, technical defects, design flaws and the stubbornness of materials or their wear and tear and transience - the reasons for imperfection are manifold.
Peter Bauhuis: Seria, 2020 © Peter Bauhuis
The show exemplifies the extent to which the consequences of flaws, imperfections and defects can have damaging or positive effects, such as the charming flaw that makes an object something very special. The focus is on the deviation from the ideal and it is questioned how the damaged can be caught or repaired, how reused material resources can lead to new solutions or how failure and playing with chance can open up new paths. Because: "Perfectly Imperfect" is much more than shortcomings and defects.
Events
A broad program of events accompanies and deepens the exhibition: thematic and dialogical guided tours with curators and experts, talks, workshops for everyone and much more are on the agenda. Topics such as legacy issues and committees, or the question of when something is finished at all, will be addressed. However, temporary scenography and the reuse of exhibition material will also be discussed. Talks such as "Failing at the city", in cooperation with the Forum Architektur Winterthur, will discuss learning from false assumptions and blind spots; in the piano concert "Nobody's perfect" you can listen to unfinished works by celebrities such as Mozart, Bach or Schönberg and in the reading "In praise of imperfection - to all bad parents" by author and journalist Mikael Krogerus, not only parents can sit back and relax for once.
November 24, 2023 to May 12, 2024
www.gewerbemuseum.ch
Heike Bolling: Errors in Production, Record, 2006 © 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich
