Hans Ulrich Obrist
Category: Curator
Nationality: Swiss
Last Year: 35

Anyone can do a lot; not everyone can do a lot and consistently do it well. Even fewer can keep doing it well, year upon year; and of those who can, nobody does more, better, than Hans Ulrich Obrist. When the Swiss dynamo issued a sixpoint curatorial statement relating to his Beijing Mini-Marathon in December 2008, the first point was: ‘Don’t stop. We never stop’. It’s clearly the ubiquitous curator’s axiom, and Obrist’s third year of juggling a full quota of freelance work with his job as co-director of exhibitions (to abbreviate his extensive title) at the Serpentine Gallery found him continuing at full, burnout-defying speed. In the London institution, working alongside Julia Peyton-Jones, he helped shape a diverse programme of solo shows ranging from glossy (Jeff Koons) to oblique (Rebecca Warren), from old (Gustav Metzger, b. 1926) to young (Luke Fowler, b. 1978), and continued his mission to introduce the West to the East via December’s lively group show, Indian Highway – mounted shortly after Obrist jetted back from the East himself, having cocurated the 3rd Yokohama Triennial. Then, from highways to Unbuilt Roads, this being the title of his springtime exhibition dedicated to 107 artists’ unfinished projects (an Obrist obsession) at e-flux’s project space in New York. Enough? No. Add the publication of Obrist’s illuminating interviews books, A Brief History of Curating and On Curating; the acclaimed restaging of his and Philippe Parreno’s ‘time-based exhibition’, Il Tempo del Postino (2007), at Art Basel. Factor in Daniel Birnbaum’s Venice Biennale, whose concerns with networks and globalism strongly reflected an ongoing dialogue with Obrist. Add the lectures, the predawn Starbucks seminars (aka the Brutally Early Club), the panel discussions, the – wait, can I have another 250 words, please?