The curators Wade Guyton and Beatrix Ruf with the Collector Michael Ringier (from left to right). Photo: Susanne Diesner

Wade Guyton and Beatrix Ruf in Conversation with Matteo Giovanelli Following the opening of Michael Ringier’s Collection at the Langen Foundation, Düsseldorf

On April 13th, The Langen Foundation (Düsseldorf, GER) opened an extraordinary exhibition celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Swiss Ringier Collection. The show unfolds within Tadao Andō’s iconic minimalist structure, showcasing around 500 works from Michael Ringier’s personal collection, spanning works from the late 1960s to today. As the title suggests — Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound — the exhibition is an investigation into the nature and evolution of the artistic medium. Beyond its repertoire, it reveals the infinite ways artists push and redefine the boundaries of medium through experimentation, layering, and expression.

The exhibition is curated by Beatrix Ruf – who directed Kunsthalle Zürich (2001-2014), the Stedelijk Museum (2014-2019), and oversaw the Ringier Collection for two decades until 2014 – alongside the New York-based artist Wade Guyton, known for his post-conceptual practice spanning printmaking, photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and digital media. In this case, Guyton appears both as an exhibiting artist, with various works on display, and as a curator, through subtle interventions in the space that cross over between the two roles. To delve into the curatorial process and hear more about different perspectives on the act of exhibition-making, we had a conversation with them.

– Matteo Giovanelli

Matteo Giovanelli: When did the two of you first meet?

Wade Guyton: 2005. But our first project together was in 2006 at Kunsthalle Zürich, when Beatrix was director. It was a show with me, Seth Price, Kelly Walker, and Josh Smith.

Beatrix Ruf: Four solo shows disguised as a group show.

WG: Right. We treated them as solo shows, but they bled into each other – a bit like this exhibition.

You’ve worked together for years as artist and curator. This time you’re co-curators. What does curating an exhibition mean to you?

BR: You go first, I’m not even sure.

WG: I was invited to act as a curator, but I don’t have the ability or the bandwidth to understand all of the artworks at once, so for me, it became a research project. I started by going through everything. Beatrix has deep knowledge of the works, how they connect. I come at it more intuitively, spatially. We bounced between those modes – curatorial logic and artistic response. It was about creating an experience rather than stitching together micro-narratives. And since I’m also in the collection, I had to ask: what does it mean for an artist to curate a show they’re part of?

Tell me about the vitrines and carpet rolls – your sculptural interventions?

WG: The vitrines usually display my own works on paper, but Michael has this huge works-on-paper collection. Rather than clutter the walls, I used my vitrines to display his pieces, more like tools than artworks. The blue carpets came from a project at Madre Museum in Naples. We didn’t anticipate how intense the sunlight would be here, so we turned them into curtains. They protect the work and add to the sculptural language. We also swapped out the museum benches for sofas from my studio, which have been in previous shows.

Would you say this is your way of curating — displaying artworks while also intervening as an artist? And Beatrix, what’s your take on this from a curatorial perspective?

WG: I like when my work can be repurposed. I think it’s good to be less precious about one’s work. There’s not one reading. The vitrines became display units. The sofas became seating.

BR: Exactly. These are already part of the museum vernacular. People sit, lean, linger. Why not blur the line between artwork and furniture? Same with vitrines, they’re both containers and objects. That ambiguity is productive.

How did you approach the idea of revealing Michael Ringier’s portrait as a collector through your curatorial choices?

BR: I don’t think we necessarily thought about revealing Michael Ringier as a collector as the goal. I’ve worked with the collection for 20 years, so I know it very well. But I’m not a curator who arrives with an overriding concept. I look at what’s there and respond. The goal is to let the works speak. Not to instrumentalize them. A good show creates space for uncertainty.

Curating not as framing or explaining, but as allowing for tension, for uncertainty to remain present. It’s a very generous way of thinking about the relationship between artworks and the viewer.

BR: The best works keep asking questions. Just when you think you understand them, they shift. That’s what makes them exciting. The curator’s job is to create an environment where those conversations can unfold.

The Ringier Collection spans decades marked by radical media shifts – from analog to digital, from print to platform. Did that factor in?

BR: The collection grew during a time of transition. Many of the artists in the collection like Sturtevant or General Idea were ahead of their time. They questioned authorship long before it became mainstream. Sturtevant’s repetitions were radical. She wasn’t just copying, she was curating, predicting. She repeated Warhol, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, artists who weren’t yet canon. It was a hardcore feminist act, even if she never called it that.

That’s really compelling — especially how those early gestures already pointed to structural shifts we’re still unpacking today. It’s fascinating to think of Sturtevant’s work as both critique and prediction. Do you think the collection also reflects a broader shift toward collective authorship and shared cultural production — something we see, for instance, in General Idea’s practice?

BR: General Idea dissolved authorship completely. The group was the artist. That collective model is standard now, especially in tech-driven practices. It’s not about the medium for its own sake. It’s about how technology alters perception.

Why did you choose this title for the exhibition? Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound. Ringier Collection 1995-2025.

BR: It’s interesting to work with clichés. These old media labels still shape how we think. But what is a painting now? It might be digital data printed on canvas. Wade can speak to that better.

The title suggests a taxonomy of forms. Was it a challenge to the definition of the artwork as a medium?

BR: The medium only matters when it helps the artwork do what the artist needs it to do. Think of Bruce Nauman — he’d stop once the medium did what he wanted. That’s why so much of his work looks unfinished. For him, it wasn’t about refining the object; it was about reaching a point where the idea had landed.

WG: For me, calling something a painting or a photograph can be useful. It helps viewers situate themselves. But once that’s done, you can start to pull it apart. If I say it’s a painting, fine — but what if I can send it as a file? What’s its scale? How many times can it be reproduced? Those questions open things up.

We are increasingly seeing AI-generated images or AI productions, both in artists’ practices and in curatorship. How do you imagine artistic and creative practices evolving in response to this? And how do you see collections evolving?

BR: Fax Machine Art. Ask Seth Price.

WG: Yeah, he’s probably more versed in this technology.

BR: Again, I think it’s not about the medium being new. It’s about whether it enables new thought. Artists like Holly Herndon use AI because they’re interested in how it reshapes reality. That’s what matters.

So it’s not about whether something is or isn’t a painting?

WG: It is – and it isn’t. The interesting question is whether AI changes how we think. If it does, it will change the art we make. That’s more compelling than the tech itself.

BR: I love that AI-generated images are never fixed. They’re approximations. That resonates with me – there is no stable truth, only versions of it. Artists like Lynn Hershman Leeson were already exploring that in the ‘80s. It’s not new. The faces in her drawings are approximations, because she understood that reality lacks sharpness or a single, “proven” truth. I find that fascinating. That’s where real shifts happen. There’s a painter in the collection, Laura Owens, who continually finds new ways to translate how visuality changes our sense of reality. She translates that into painting in a really powerful way. I’m sure we’ll see exciting things emerge from all this, but I don’t think it’ll be an NFT.