The curator enjoying matchmaker between rising artists and Aspen collectors

“I hallucinate what I need,” Roland Barthes wrote in A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, his 1977 e-book of literary ruminations on the circumstances of intimacy. That notion of craving as a artistic impulse is on the centre of A Lover’s Discourse, a sequence of exhibitions on the Aspen Artwork Museum (AAM) that entails six separate month-long displays juxtaposing items by early-career artists with historic works from non-public collections in Aspen, a neighborhood famend for its excessive focus of big-ticket artwork patrons. The sequence was conceived by the AAM curator-at-large Stella Bottai, a London-based curator, author and tutorial who additionally leads the modern artwork programme of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

“I actually appreciated that the artists responded to the invites with pleasure, as a result of it’s a bit like a blind date,” Bottai says. “We’re a non-collecting museum, there’s not a database we will pull from, so the team-effort side is vital. In dialogue with my colleagues in Aspen, we perceive which assortment could have the form of work that the artists are interested by.”

Artist Zeinab Saleh, whose work is featured within the first iteration of *A Lover’s Discourse* Courtesy the artist

The sequence, which launched in late June and continues till January 2024, opened with a pairing of monochromatic, aquatic work by the Kenyan, London-based artist Zeinab Saleh juxtaposed with Regen (1987), the German artist Katharina Fritsch’s vinyl recording of rainfall (till 22 July).

“Zeinab was actually interested by attempting to supply a studying of her work that strikes away from simply the two-dimensional floor to a way of ambiance,” Bottai says. “I used to be thrilled that Katharina was actually interested by understanding how this youthful artist had arrived at that work. So regardless that that is one thing that may not be formally obvious to the general public, there’s this different layer of dialogue taking place within the background.”

Chase Corridor, whose works might be featured within the second installment of *A Lover’s Discourse* Photograph by Lauren Rodriguez Corridor, courtesy the artist

The second instalment within the sequence (27 July-27 August) will characteristic latest works by Chase Corridor, the American painter recognized for his compositions made with a mixture of acrylic paints and occasional. “Chase was very interested by connecting with post-war abstraction,” Bottai says. “We discovered an incredible work on paper by Jackson Pollock from the gathering of Larry and Susan Marx. For Chase that was additionally a technique to begin serious about Pollock’s drip by means of the politics of labour.”

By putting surprising artwork genres, eras and media in dialog with each other, Bottai hopes A Lover’s Discourse will broaden Barthes’s legacy into a visible realm, exploring tensions between the manifest and clandestine, need and wish.

“This notion of a collector’s community connects with the thought of A Lover’s Discourse, as a result of, once more, there’s this sense of need and possession which might be a part of the collector’s pursuit,” she says. “When artists reply to current collections in museums, they’ve data on what’s already there. In our case, we’re informed what the artist wish to discover, after which we make that occur.”