SLOUGHT FOUNDATION PRESS RELEASE

Press Contact:
Aaron Levy
Executive Director

Slought Foundation
4017 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-3513

http://slought.org | Email Directory
Hours: Thu-Sat 1-6pm
Tel 215.701.4627 | Fax 215.764.5783

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Caption: Installation Shot, 2003
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Installation Shot, 2003

"Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting"
Featuring Jasper Johns, Sol Le Witt, Gerhard Richter, Alexander Calder, Oskar Kokoschka, Josef Albers

Slought Foundation Exhibition | October 05 - January 11, 2003

Reception: Friday, October 18, 2002 ; 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Free admission (Reservation not required)

Curated by Aaron Levy
Exhibition Openings Series



Project Website: http://slought.org/content/11083/

"Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting" (2002), the inaugural exhibition of Slought Foundation, playfully revisits Raul Ruiz's avant-garde classic film of the same name. The exhibition and documentary video featured original works--presented as a collection--by Jasper Johns, Sol Le Witt, Gerhard Richter, Alexander Calder, Oskar Kokoschka, and Josef Albers.

Through a series of interviews with noted artistics and critics, the 50 minute video presents the viewer with a composite portrait of a collector and his or her collection on the occasion of its exhibition. The primary focus of the movie is the seventh and final work in the collection, which is missing. A series of hypotheses are advanced concerning it status and identity, and these hypotheses provide unity and coherence for an otherwise disparate and incomplete collection.

Commentators in the 2002 production included Jean-Michel Rabaté, Osvaldo Romberg, Susan Stewart, Reinaldo Laddaga, and Gregory Flaxman, among others. Similarly, in Raul Ruiz's "Hypothèse du tableau volé, L'" (Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting, 1979), two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.