Hans-Ulrich Obrist

“Exhibitions usually are not collected; they disperse after they take place.”

“During my time at high school and university in Kreuzlingen and St. Gallen, I traveled around Europe looking at art, visiting artists, studios, galleries and museums.”

“Many artists have not been able to realise their fondest projects. My role is to help them.”

“Numerous are the posthumous museums and memorials devoted exclusively to one artist, architect or author and designed to preserve or artificially reconstruct the namesake's original working or living conditions.”

“In this new age of GPS, Google Earth and multidimensional digital maps, mapping is suddenly hugely relevant again.”

“To record is a process against forgetting. I do interviews because it's what I've been doing every day for a few hours since I was a kid. I've always talked to artists.”

“Everything I do is somehow connected to velocity.”

“Fly-in, fly-out curating nearly always produces superficial results; it's a practice that goes hand in hand with the fashion for applying the word 'curating' to everything that involves simply making a choice - radio playlists, hotel decor, even the food stalls in New York's High Line Park.”

“I met Gerhard Richter and Alighiero Boetti when I was a teenager, and I was really inspired by them. When Boetti died, I realized I only vaguely remembered so many things he told me. It was such a pity. Had I only recorded his voice, he would still be with me, and I could listen to it from time to time.”

“I founded a club, which is called the Brutally Early Club. It's basically a breakfast salon for the 21st century where art meets science meets architecture meets literature.”

“For me, the idea of curating can be expanded. Curating science, curating art, music and theater and performance and not only bring those things into art but bring art into those areas.”

“When I was a kid and started to be obsessed by art in the 1980s, the art world was in this polarity Warhol/Beuys, Beuys/Warhol. Both expended the notion of art extremely, but in very different ways.”