Ulf Linde at Moderna Museet (Stockholm)

Ulf Linde, even
Moderna Museet
29 September

Fifty years of intense studies to find the key to Marcel Duchamp’s oeuvre will be revealed in a major exhibition at The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts produced in collaboration with Moderna Museet. The exhibition Ulf Linde, even opens on 29 September, 2011, and will present Moderna Museet’s entire collection of Duchamp and the world-premiere of Ulf Linde’s striking 1:10 replica of Duchamp’s last piece Etant Donnés: 1° La chute d’eau, 2° Le gaz d’éclairage.

In 1961, Ulf Linde produced the first authorised copy of Marcel Duchamp’s monumental piece, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even, and Linde is without doubt one of the world’s most important interpreters of Marcel Duchamp’s art. For more than half a century, he has pursued intense studies of Duchamp’s entire oeuvre and has made perfect replicas of all his major works. Like no one else, he knows the works in minute detail.

Ulf Linde’s replicas and his early texts on Duchamp were essential to the international reception of the artist’s work and played a key role in such major exhibitions as Walter Hopps’s 1963 Duchamp retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum, and the Centre Pompidou’s opening exhibition in 1977. Ulf Linde, who is still as active as ever, is the author of numerous books and essays on Duchamp, and an as-yet unpublished manuscript scrutinising the mathematical principles behind Duchamp’s art reveals what Linde claims to be the key to Marcel Duchamp’s poetic universe.

“The three brothers Gaston Duchamp (Jacques Villon), Raymond Duchamp Villon and Marcel Duchamp had three sisters, Suzanne, Madeleine and Yvonne. With father and mother, they were a family of 8. Marcel Duchamp heeded his own plight within the family. In his eyes there were only the other family members. He was an eighth left over – 1/8. On that basis I have studied the mathematical relationships that determine most of Marcel Duchamp’s works,” says Ulf Linde.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts and Moderna Museet in Stockholm are proud to present Ulf Linde, even, an exhibition built on Ulf Linde’s unique achievement as an active spectator and dedicated interpreter of art. It is based on a series of conversations held with Ulf Linde over a period of several years. The result is a large spatial installation in which the Royal Academy’s halls will be temporarily altered to create a setting in which visitors can step into the role of active spectators.

The entire Duchamp collection of Moderna Museet will be presented, with the addition of new replicas of major Duchamp works, of which the most striking is the world premiere of Ulf Linde’s 1:10 replica of Duchamp’s last piece, Etant Donnés: 1° La chute d’eau, 2° Le gaz d’éclairage. The exhibition will also include some of the most significant works that Linde played a vital part in adding to the Moderna Museet collection, works by Jean Arp, Francis Picabia, Giorgio de Chirico and CF Reuterswärd, as well as the museum’s replica of Tatlin’s Tower, produced by Ulf Linde.

Ulf Linde, even is produced jointly by The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts and Moderna Museet. The exhibition has been realised with a team of curators consisting of the director of the Moderna Museet, Daniel Birnbaum, and co-director Ann-Sofi Noring, the permanent secretary of The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Susanna Slöör, the artist Henrik Samuelsson, and freelance curator Jan Åman. An extensive exhibition catalogue is currently being produced, with Daniel Birnbaum and Jan Åman as editors.