Push and Pull

“Anyone can find or make one or more rooms of any shape, size, proportion, and color – then furnish them perhaps, maybe paint some part or everything. Everyone else can come in and, if the room(s) are furnished, they can also arrange them, accommodating themselves as they see fit. Each day things will change.”

Allan Kaprow’s Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hofmann was created in 1963 as part of an exhibition intended as a tribute to his teacher, Hofmann. Kaprow’s set of instructions invites the audience to rearrange furniture within a spatial setting. This playful activation in the spirit of the “Happening,” also encourages a less conventional view of the museum: a form of deliberate disorder within an institutional environment. For Kaprow, each restaging of Push and Pull signifies reinvention, fostering creative participation and highlighting the constant state of change.

The mumok places Push and Pull at the core of an exhibition that explores collective action and the artistic process beyond the notion of singular authorship. Selected works from the museum’s collection offer diverse perspectives on transforming the museum space into a temporary studio of creative activity.
Curated by Vanessa Joan Müller and Matthias Michalka

Image: Allan Kaprow, Push and Pull. Reinvention von Allan Kaprow, mumok 2002