This project is related to the artist's conception of time, which, in his view, is always open. Many artworks reappear at different times, in various associations and contexts; each work responds to another as a source that produces the next yet creates distance with those that came before it.
Texts and interviews with the artist accompany this complete catalog at different periods, published in their original language and translated into French and English.
The introductory essay to
Forty-Nine Exhibitions was written by
François Aubart in the preparatory stages of Rüdiger's monographic exhibition,
Chambre double, at Les Tanneries – Centre d'art contemporain in Amilly in 2021. It throws light on the way Rüdiger was influenced by the discovery—in Milan during the 1980s— of Luciano Fabro's teaching and
Lucio Fontana's spatial work, and on his investment in a collective with intense collaborations, and analyzes the way those attitudes infused the multiple forms of his work.
Bernhard Rüdiger (born 1964 in Rome, lives and works in Paris since 1994) is an artist whose work on space, sound, and the physical and perceptual experiences of the body is fueled by a theoretical consideration of the reality of the artwork and its historical responsibility. He heads the Contemporary Art and Historical Temporalities research unit at the ENSBA Lyon.