Desire & Conquest

Filmstills, Russ Meyer Vintage Prints, Celebrity Nudes, Pornophotographica

April 13 – June 1 2008

The terms 'desire' and 'conquest' play a central role in the exhibition project at Kunsthalle Wintherthur in three aspects. Firstly, the fact that the whole show comes from private collections and that the collectors' individual interests led them to be constantly on the hunt for new images. Secondly, the show itself displays erotic to pornographic representations, and thirdly, concerning the relationship of the respective collections and their discourse with contemporary art.
For many years Nicola von Senger has been collecting nude images of famous people that are found in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet. These are archived in an alphabetical order, and meanwhile composes of forty folders. Fritz Franz Vogel collects an incomparable amount. His Collection of Pornographica contains along with, pornographic photography from the end of the nineteenth century up to the 1960s, books with the similar themes as well as films from the 1970s, that were made for home showings. Christoph Schifferli is interested in photography all around. A specialty of his collection is the so–called film stills. These were known for from the vitrines of the cinemas, in which the newest films were advertised. A focal point of Chicco Parpinelli's collection is ultimately the Russ Meyer Vintage Prints. Parallel to his films Meyers was also active as a Pin-up-Photographer, which within this Genre are extremely noteworthy.

Oliver Kielmayer