January 20 - March 6, 2022

SPURS Gallery I | 798 Art District D-06, Jiuxianqiao Rd., Chaoyang District, Beijing

SPURS Gallery is proud to present “The Most Dangerous Game,” an international group exhibition, organized by artist André Butzer and art historian Christian Malycha.

For one, “The Most Dangerous Game” (1924) is an exotic pulp story by Richard Connell, set in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution. It is an all too real tale of individual perseverance in face of universal uncertainty—people being uprooted and stranded, still the predators fall prey to themselves eventually.

Secondly, “The Most Dangerous Game” was a slogan coined by the Situationist International (1957–1972) in order to describe their endeavors to subvert the “spectacle” of the capitalist consumer society in post-war Western Europe and the United States—a game, for now lost and as hard to master as Connell’s fictional account.

Finally in the curators’ understanding, “The Most Dangerous Game” is life itself, be it an artistic one or the one of a dire every day. A work of art always risks everything at once. For in art, one’s innermost and therefore universal feelings and experiences are tested amidst an uncomprehending reality—at stake is, what is real?

The exhibition spans three generations and brings together 19 artists, each of which with a unique stance and artistic voice. In a daring gamble, “The Most Dangerous Game” puts on the line:

Thomas Arnolds
Sarah Bogner
Leo Bulgarini
Jayme Burtis
André Butzer
Thomas Grötz
Philipp Haager
Désirée Klein
Maja Körner
Steffen Krüger
Max Maslansky
Enys Miller
John Newsom
Albert Oehlen
Frank Stürmer
Grace Weaver
Thomas Winkler
Ulrich Wulff
Josef Zekoff

curated by André Butzer & Christian Malycha