Daimler Art Collection

[B]Singapore, November 25, 2008[/B] - signature pieces from the Daimler Art Collection will be showcased at the Singapore Art Museum ( SAM ) as part of its world tour. The exhibition, which will be on display at the SAM from November 27, 2008, to March 1, 2009, includes more than 130 paintings, installations, sculptures, photographs and video works from the Daimler Art Collection.

Daimler Art Department's exhibition "Is it tomorrow yet?" is a high-quality collection covering a range of styles and content, documenting modern and contemporary art. With more than 130 pieces it also offers a comprehensive portrait of one of the important German corporate collections. The art works of the exhibition were selected in close collaboration with the SAM. They were created between the 1920's and the present, and represent artists such as Andy Warhol, Willi Baumeister, Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer, Nam June Paik, Sylvie Fleury, John M Armleder and other young artists from South Africa, Asia and Australia.

A unique key component of the exhibition "Is it tomorrow yet?" is a comprehensive educational program for school and college students, which had been developed in collaboration with the education department of the SAM.

The aim of the program is to examine the content of the exhibition, its works and artists as part of school lessons or studies. Students will receive a 200-page booklet about the exhibition for free - sponsored by Daimler South East Asia. The education booklet was developed by Daimler's Art Collection department, which features 60 colour illustrations. The educational program also includes a guided tour through the exhibition. In the run-up to the exhibition, museum employees, teachers, professors and art history students were trained to provide their young audience with key information and many interesting details.

With this program for schools and higher education institutions in Singapore, Daimler offers an important and sustainable contribution to art education. Additionally, the education program will contribute to the art curriculum in Singapore school subjects that deal with contemporary European and international art from early 20th century art up to today. This exhibition and the educational program could well be the first opportunity for many children and youth in Singapore to be introduced and acquainted with these specific art tendencies of the 20th century and contemporary art, focusing on abstract tendencies, car related art and contemporary photography and video art, questioning critical actual issues as well.

Visitors and the public will be welcomed to SAM by a huge blue sculpture, set up in front of the Singapore Art Museum - IMEX (k), Untitled (Balloon Flower), 2008 (approx. 6 x 6 x 6 m, air, industrial fabric, fan), functioning as an art signage created specifically for the Singapore venue.The work in front of the Singapore Art Museum is eye-catching, but does not seem quite genuine - a very big balloon, manipulated to look like a knotted balloon. Cognoscenti will be struck immediately by a similarity to Jeff Koons's famous "Balloon Flower" sculpture, but unlike the highly polished, stylish stainless steel version, this inflatable is one thing above everything else: ridiculously big! We're used to such colossal outdoor signs in our city centres, eg. when a department store uses an inflatable version to advertise one of their products. Now the Daimler Art Collection is using a large lookalike of Koons's "Balloon Flower" to advertise its own exhibition in the Singapore Art Museum. The Daimler Art Collection owns the original version of the stainless steel sculpture, which is placed very prominently in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz. The possibility to play with an accessible emblem is definitely a very important aspect of Koons's work. Now his sculpture is working in its turn as a pictorial abbreviation, as a logo and emblem for the Daimler Art Collection.

The world tour of the Daimler Art Collection began in Karlsruhe and Detroit in 2003. After Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Palma de Mallorca and Madrid, the exhibition is now making its first stop in South East Asia.

The Daimler Art Collection is domiciled in Berlin and Stuttgart. The Collection's curator and head of the Art Collection Department is Dr. Renate Wiehager.

The Daimler Art Collection, which was founded in 1977 and now includes around 1,800 pieces by roughly 600 international artists, focuses on an abstract-constructive, conceptual or minimalist image concept. The collection includes work groups of public sculptures, photography and video as well as car-related art and commissioned art works. The emphasis on this content originally followed the development of art in the first half of the 20th century around Stuttgart and southern Germany, later expanding to include related German, European and international, non-expressive pictorial art. The Collection is now holding this direction and gradually adding representative pieces of new media art.

Daimler has been represented in Singapore for decades. The Mercedes-Benz brand enjoys the highest reputation and admiration in Singapore as well as in the region. Daimler SEA is committed to Singapore and as part of it's CSR activities, the Daimler Art Collection and the educational program will foster appreciation of art for everybody interested in.

More information at www.collection.daimler.com

Credits: JRC