Hans Ulrich Obrist

The leading light in transdisciplinary approaches to cultural experience, Hans Ulrich Obrist is a global curator and artistic director based between London and Zurich. Consistently connecting the dots between emerging artists and art historical thought, the Swiss curator’s innovative practice and deep curiosity has made him one of the most influential creative tastemakers of the past two decades.

Known for his long-standing role as Artistic Director of the Serpentine, Obrist has curated over 300 shows in his career to date and written and edited numerous books, including 2015’s influential ‘Ways of Curating’ and, in 2021, ‘140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth,’ a manifesto that also serves to demonstrate his ongoing dedication to sustainability and combating the climate crisis. Applying this spirit of expansiveness in his collaborations with brands, Obrist’s keen eye for cultural shifts makes him a kind of soothsayer for our time: creating experiences for global audiences that feel like a summons from the future.

Named by ArtReview as the number one most influential person in contemporary art twice, Obrist is a luminary who continues to push the art world forward by constantly questioning its outdated categories – and by applying his unique expertise to break the boundaries between fashion and technology, physical and digital culture.

Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION, the group exhibition WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age is now open in Düsseldorf.

WORLDBUILDING examines the relationship between gaming and time-based media art with a journey through various ways in which artists have interacted with video games and made them into an art form.

“In 2021 2.8 billion people—almost a third of the world’s population—played video games, making a niche pastime into the biggest mass phenomenon of our time. Many people spend hours every day in a parallel world and live a multitude of different lives. Video games are to the twenty-first century what movies were to the twentieth century and novels to the nineteenth century.”

– Hans Ulrich Obrist

US pop artist KAWS exhibited his sculptures and paintings at the Serpentine earlier this year, with a parallel version available in Fortnite, one of the world’s largest online video games with more than 400 million registered accounts.

All built by the Fortnite creative community, players were able to explore the exhibition, interact with KAWS’ artworks and experience his iconic sculptures in a completely new way; the first time Fortnite has made a real-world art exhibit accessible virtually.

“This multi-dimensional project, accessible through virtual and physical portals, demonstrates the remarkable synergies between gaming, space, and sensorial experience.”

– Hans Ulrich Obrist

Harnessing the power of social media to celebrate the beauty of and revive the lost art of handwriting, this Instagram project includes photos of specially handwritten messages by some of the world’s greatest contemporary artists.

Hans Ulrich’s latest book ‘Remember to Dream!’ gathers a selection of 100 handwritten thoughts, dreams, drawings, musings, jokes, quotations, questions, answers, poems, and puns he has received since the project began in 2013.

“It’s about the message, but it’s also about the fact that two handwritings are never the same. It’s the opposite of when, through globalisation, differences can disappear and there is homogenisation. Handwriting is the opposite because two people never have the same handwriting. It is an incredible celebration of difference.”

– Hans Ulrich Obrist

Curated by Hans Ulrich, the traveling exhibition (a play on Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ slogan) has become the longest-running and most far-reaching exhibition to ever take place, with 169 cities participating worldwide.

‘do it’ began in Paris in 1993 as a conversation between Hans Ulrich and artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier. They were curious to see what would happen if they started an exhibition that could constantly generate new versions of itself. To test the idea, they invited 12 artists to propose artworks based on written “scores” or instructions that can be openly interpreted every time they are presented. The instructions were then translated into 9 different languages and circulated internationally as a book.

‘do it’ (home) was first conceived by Hans Ulrich and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI) in 1995, as a collection of ‘do it’ instructions that could easily be realised in one’s own home. In Spring 2020, in response to the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new version of ‘do it’ (home) was launched.