Into Me/ Out of Me

This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition “Into Me/Out of Me”, Contemporary Art Center, a MoMa affiliate, New York, June 25 — September 25, 2006 and Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, November 25, 2006 — March 4, 2007; MACRO, Rome, April 21 — September 30, 2007. Curator: Klaus Biesenbach. With works from over forty years, by more than 130 artists, including Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Paul McCarthy, Pipilotti Rist, Andy Warhol, and Lawrence Weiner. Into Me/Out of Me looks at the personal and social dimensions of the physical as the central theme of contemporary art over the past four decades. Over 130 international artists examine processes that involve the invasion, penetration, and exploration of as well as exit from the human body: metabolic functions (eating, drinking, excretion), procreation (sexual intercourse, conception, birth), violence, and illness (injuries, surgery). This daily exchange between the inside and the outside is comprehensively presented using mythological references, religious and secular rituals, scientific practices, and experimental explorations of the self.