All The Best

The Deutsche Bank Collection 
And Zaha Hadid

Curators

• Dr Ariane Grigoteit
  Director Deutsche Bank Art
  
• Joselina Cruz
  Singapore Art Museum

After its great success at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin and the Hara Museum in Tokyo, the anniversary show of the Deutsche Bank Collection is now making a guest appearance at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) from September 1 until November 20, 2006.

And it’s here that “All the Best – The Deutsche Bank Collection and Zaha Hadid,” the trilogy of exhibitions started two years ago in celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Deutsche Bank Collection, experiences its spectacular culmination on the series’ last station at the renowned Singapore Art Museum. Parallel to “All the Best,” the Singapore Biennale will also be opening for the first time – as the cultural climax of the event series “Singapore 2006” held in celebration of the 2006 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group. 

In this context, the two events form an ambitious platform for a dialogue between international contemporary art and current art trends in Southeast Asia. Imbedded in the visionary exhibition space developed specifically for the show by London-based star architect Zaha Hadid, “All the Best” is a multi-layered spectacular “Work of Art”; incorporating over 150 works from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it illustrates the history of the corporate collection and artistic positions spanning 50 years.  

Deutsche Bank’s commitment to contemporary art has set standards internationally. The Deutsche Bank Collection, which was founded in 1979 and has been growing ever since, can be seen in the bank’s offices throughout the world – in accordance with the motto “art at the workplace.” Its thrust is twofold: to provide stimulation and to pose a challenge. Today, it is the largest corporate collection worldwide and encompasses approximately 50,000 works.

The selection made for “All the Best” by Dr. Ariane Grigoteit, director of Deutsche Bank Art, and Joselina Cruz, curator at SAM, focuses on the media paper and photography and documents recent and current trends on the international art scene.

Following the anniversary shows celebrating 25 years of the Deutsche Bank Collection in Berlin and Tokyo, it is a particular honor for Deutsche Bank Art to cooperate with Hadid for the third time for “All the Best” at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM). The revolutionary idea of the collection – to present art in the unusual environment of the workplace – is reflected in an architecture of contrasts. The colonial neo-classical building of the former boys’ school that today houses SAM is juxtaposed with gigantic, flowing technoid shapes.
Flanked by greats like Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, and Bruce Nauman, it is mainly the works of subsequent generations and recent acquisitions that determine the character of the collection. 

Whereas contemporary German art is represented by the likes of Martin Kippenberger, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Gregor Schneider, the focus here lies on the collection’s global orientation. Thus, “All the Best” shows recent works from the US, Mexico, Great Britain, South Africa, Russia, and Asian countries. Apart from works by Francis Alys, Laura Owens, and watercolors by Turner-Prize winner Chris Ofili, the show includes works on paper by Richard Artschwager, William Kentridge, and the Chinese art star Yan Pei Ming that have never before been shown in public. In addition, various currents in international photography can be experienced with the staged photographs of Sharon Lockhart and Miwa Yanagi as well as with Boris Mikhailov’s stark images of a new Russia.