‘Specular Windows – Reflections on the Self and the Wider World’
Marc Adrian, Martin Arnold, Vittorio Brodmann, Georg Chaimowicz, Adriana Czernin, Josef Dabernig, Gunter Damisch, VALIE EXPORT, Judith Fegerl, Michael Franz / Nadim Vardag, Padhi Frieberger, Bernhard Frue, Walter Gamerith, Bruno Gironcoli, Samara Golden, Judith Hopf, Alfred Hrdlicka, Iman Issa, Martha Jungwirth, Jesper Just, Tillman Kaiser, Johanna Kandl, Joseph Kosuth, Susanne Kriemann, Friedl Kubelka/Peter Weibel, Luiza Margan, Till Megerle, Henri Michaux, Muntean Rosenblum, Walter Pichler, Tobias Pils, Arnulf Rainer, Ugo Rondinone, Isa Rosenberger, Gerhard Rühm, Markus Schinwald, Toni Schmale, Anne Schneider, Richard Teschner, Simon Wachsmuth, Rudolf Wacker, Anna Witt; curated by Severin Dünser and Luisa Ziaja
21er Haus, Vienna
22 June 2017 – 14 January 2018
The point of departure of every thematic group exhibition is the spatiotemporal difference of its parts, bearing in mind that they each stem from specific contexts that are more or less explicit in their aesthetic appearance. By bringing together these parts and especially by positioning individual works in specific constellations, inconspicuous connections between them become discernible, contexts of meaning emerge or are reinforced, and occasionally contradictions arise. The fact that the exhibition as a medium has such an ability to generate meaning makes it a space of negotiation where the visual and narrative threads presented are repeatedly picked up, spun further, dropped, or linked with another point by us as observers. Our curatorial selection and combination of works from the collections of the Belvedere and the Artothek des Bundes is motivated by the question of relevance for the here and now with regard to the tensions addressed in the title ‘Specular Windows: Reflections on the Self and the Wider World’: windows mark the threshold between private and public, they are openings that frame our view of the outside from the inside, whereas from the outside we see ourselves reflected in them. Both motifs—the mirror and the window—are known in the fine arts as metaphors for our perception of the world and our perception of self. This view of the internal, the external, and their interaction is the focus of this exhibition. The show opens with works whose topic is, in the widest sense, the subject’s ability to articulate in the face of an ongoing state of crisis. Joseph Kosuth, for instance, quite literally shines a light on a passage of text from Sigmund Freud’s ‘Psychopathology of Everyday Life’ on linguistic slips in times of war, while Muntean/Rosenblum connect the scene of a violent clash between demonstrators and police with the dissonance between individual memory and official historiography, and Anna Witt encourages viewers to ‘Radical Thinking’ and to sketching a different reality with her video installation. The photographs by Bernhard Frue and Nadim Vardag tell of the body’s presence in its absence: Frue’s negative print ‘Samthansen’ makes plain how the shadow economy of sex work leaves its mark on a public park in the form of improvised screens; in contrast, Vardag exposes mechanisms of fetishization by defamiliarizing an iconic image. ‘A Vicious Undertow’ by Jesper Just revolves around the production of desire in mainstream cinema and means to thwart it; Luiza Margan turns our attention to traditional gender relations by staging a gesture carried out by couples in public spaces, while VALIE EXPORT draws a connection between the normalization of the female body and urban architecture. Both Anne Schneider and Judith Hopf work with anthropomorphic qualities, though on very different levels: Schneider’s ‘Bodyguards’ stand their ground between figuration and abstraction while oscillating in their materiality and chromaticity, whereas Hopf’s waiting, seemingly permanently poised laptop as a quasi-animated object makes reference to the burnout-stricken individual. Finally, Till Megerle’s human wheelbarrow bears witness to a game of dominance and submission, which affects body and mind in equal measure.
Drawings by Megerle can also be found in the following constellation, which is dedicated to phenomena of the spiritual and inquires after the contemporary significance of religious symbols. His drawings of donkeys’ heads reference Georges Bataille, who interpreted them as the ‘most virulent manifestation’ of base materialism in the sense of the Gnostics. Marc Adrian, on the other hand, quotes Goethe’s striking proverb ‘No one against God but God Himself,’ positioning it in a polytheistic context with his depiction of a pagan idol. Adriana Czernin’s abstract drawings unmistakably allude to Islamic art while at the same time metaphorically breaking their symmetry, whereas Simon Wachsmuth’s video shows Iranian men doing physical exercises that date back to clandestine martial arts training and that have been ritualized and imbued with spiritual content over the centuries. Physical rituals as an expression of coping with social, economic, and political escalations are also represented in the works of Walther Gamerith, Isa Rosenberger, and Alfred Hrdlicka. Gamerith’s ‘Dance of the Cripples’ is testament to the woeful state of the war-wounded who must march to the beat of Death incarnate’s drum; he reappears in Rosenberger’s video work ‘Espiral’ in the supratemporal motif of the dance of death and is enmeshed in a dense fabric of references to and continuities since the first global financial crisis. On the other hand, ‘Bal des victimes’ by Hrdlicka deals with the phenomenon of the reputedly cathartic balls said to have been hosted by the survivors of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution in commemoration of their guillotined relatives. In turn, Iman Issa’s installation sets in motion an intellectual game that is rich in associations and revolves around whether we associate a bygone era of luxury and decadence with melancholy or revolution. And Johanna Kandl’s painting focuses on the fringes of the economy and on the precariousness of the everyday in societies shaken by turbo-charged capitalism. Nature and the laws of physics provide the focus of another room. As metaphors for society or the body, analogies emerge here from which conclusions are drawn and passed on to the observers. Peter Weibel, for example, quite literally realizes his appeal for ‘More Warmth among People’. In her work, Susanne Kriemann portrays a monolith of red granite and thus also the artist Robert Smithson, at the site of whose death the stone was erected. Judith Fegerl’s piece uses soldering to connect pieces of copper wire into a fragile installation that reveals a relationship between physics and the physical. Lastly, with the aid of the laws of physics the film ‘Entropy’ by Michael Franz and Nadim Vardag describes an atmosphere in the cultural field that faces a slow emptying of meaning and hence stagnation. The protagonists of ‘Hotel Roccalba’ by Josef Dabernig on the other hand seem to surrender themselves to a conscious, paradoxically positive emptying of meaning when they collectively yet separately pursue activities—though ultimately nothing happens. The intensification of this instance of banality, which shifts into the uncanny or culminates in the horror of the everyday, is testified to in works like Markus Schinwald’s life-size doll ‘Betty’, who swings apathetically— as if controlled by an external source—back and forth on a chair, and Samara Golden’s photograph ‘Mass Murder, Blue Room’, which portrays a hallucinatory room—in which past, present, and future are entwined—as a potential crime scene. In Walter Pichler’s drawing ‘Sleeping Man’, the resting position becomes an existential act and is associated with sickness and death, whereas Martin Arnold’s video ‘Passage à l’acte’ exposes the psychological tension and latent aggression in the idyll of a family scene and Tillman Kaiser’s disconcerting wallpaper ‘Habitación retorcida’ translates the loaded relationship between mother and child into a spatial visualization. This work is linked to another constellation in which everything revolves around the self. Ugo Rondinone’s protagonist in ‘Cigarettesandwich’ saunters along a wall in a loop: in its repetition, the movement becomes a meditative, timeless rotation around himself. Another product of self-reflection is the drawing ‘Me—Embedded Somewhere in (or out) There’ by Gerhard Rühm, in which the artist has used circular hand movements to write the word ‘ich’ (English: ‘I’ or ‘me’) innumerable times in the same place; in contrast, Adriana Czernin transforms internal processes into an interplay between figuration and abstraction in her self-portrait. Self-awareness and exploring one’s own psyche as well as the emphatically anti-rationalist creation of individual, surreal pictorial worlds are themes that unite a whole array of works. The ‘Self-Portrait’ by Georg Chaimowicz, for instance, shows the artist’s head dissolving and testifies to the existential search for identity after the Shoah. Martha Jungwirth’s fantastical ‘Beetle Creature’ arises from associating subconscious gestures with conscious experiences, while Richard Teschner’s ‘Downpour’ personifies the force of nature and depicts it as a monster-like being. On the other hand, with his comic-like anthropomorphic figures Vittorio Brodmann creates intensive visual worlds of emotion just like Gunter Damisch, whose composition originates in its own cosmos beyond our collective understanding of reality. In contrast, the aesthetics of Neue Sachlichkeit set the tone for Rudolf Wacker’s still life ‘Two Heads’, which thrives on the symbolic interplay of its pictorial elements. Henri Michaux’ écriture automatique oscillates between painting and poetry, figure and writing, and was seemingly transferred directly from his subconscious onto the paper. ‘Dealing with Small Quantities’ by Tillman Kaiser suggests the fantasy of a substance-induced journey through space, and with his ‘Pig Altar’ Padhi Frieberger produces a memorial to a fictitious religion while satirizing the idolatrous worship of things in our world. Bruno Gironcoli’s space-consuming sculpture ‘Maternal, Paternal’ represents an enigmatic universe of forms and symbols that appears to address human existence in terms of the physical and the psychological. This intertwining of internal and external worlds also lies at the heart of the works by Tobias Pils and Toni Schmale: Pils’ genuine formal vocabulary holds his works in a limbo between reality and mental imagination, while Schmale’s pieces of nitro frottage on concrete exercise and sketch out a destabilization of conventional interpretive patterns of how desire can be translated into objects. This narrative description of the exhibition is our attempt to briefly outline the interplay of works on display, in the knowledge that it is in fact much more multifaceted and complex, and occasionally more fragile. It is intended to serve as a springboard for new, subjective associations and narratives that intertwine different threads than those we interweave here. As the sum of its parts, the exhibition makes it possible to experience the modern-day tensions between individual and society and simultaneously reflects—appropriately enough for specular windows—effects on the body and mind.
Exhibition catalogue:
Specular Windows – Reflections on the Self and the Wider World
Edited by Stella Rollig, Severin Dünser and Luisa Ziaja
Including texts by Véronique Abpurg, Severin Dünser, Alexander Klee, Michaela Köppl, Naima Wieltschnig, Claudia Slanar and Luisa Ziaja on works by Marc Adrian, Martin Arnold, Vittorio Brodmann, Georg Chaimowicz, Adriana Czernin, Josef Dabernig, Gunter Damisch, VALIE EXPORT, Judith Fegerl, Michael Franz / Nadim Vardag, Padhi Frieberger, Bernhard Frue, Walter Gamerith, Bruno Gironcoli, Samara Golden, Judith Hopf, Alfred Hrdlicka, Iman Issa, Martha Jungwirth, Jesper Just, Tillman Kaiser, Johanna Kandl, Joseph Kosuth, Susanne Kriemann, Friedl Kubelka/Peter Weibel, Luiza Margan, Till Megerle, Henri Michaux, Muntean Rosenblum, Walter Pichler, Tobias Pils, Arnulf Rainer, Ugo Rondinone, Isa Rosenberger, Gerhard Rühm, Markus Schinwald, Toni Schmale, Anne Schneider, Richard Teschner, Simon Wachsmuth, Rudolf Wacker and Anna Witt
Graphic design by Atelier Liska Wesle, Vienna/Berlin
German/English
Softcover, 19 × 24 cm, 136 pages, numerous illustrations in color
Belvedere Vienna, 2017
ISBN 978-3-903114-36-4
»The Grasping«
Heinrich Dunst, VALIE EXPORT, Franziska Kabisch, Barbara Kapusta, Peter Weibel, Tina Schulz, Javier Téllez
21er Raum at 21er Haus, Vienna
November 30, 2016 — January 22, 2017
The expression “grasping” defines the process of intellectual realization and is used synonymously with “understanding.” Etymologically, it is derived from the physical-haptic act of touching—similar to the term “conceive,” which stems from the Latin “concipere,” and translated literally means “to grasp things together.” The exhibition attempts to pursue what converges in the terms: manual act and intellectual reception.
For example, with his work “Writing the word hand by hand,” Peter Weibel inquires into the ability to confirm the existence of things, processes, and relations—and, first and foremost, the existence of the hand. There are very good reasons for this; already in early childhood, the hand is used to affirm external reality. In the bible, for example, doubting Thomas is quoted as saying, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”1 The philosopher Helmuth Plessner describes our perception as “eye-hand field,” which became a characteristic of humans when they learned to walk upright: “The eye leads the hand, the hand confirms the eye.”2 This seeing with the hand and the experience it brings is also at the center of Barbara Kapusta’s “Soft Rope”. In the video one sees a rope that the artist explores with her hand while sketching out her impressions of the procedure in a poem. Also Javier Téllez’s film, “Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See” (which can be seen in the Blickle Kino on the ground floor) is about tactile perception. Based on an Indian parable, the film shows six people who are blind, exploring an elephant with their hands. All have a different experience of the animal before them and their interpretations do not coincide—their subjective perceptions do not lead to an objective truth.
The hand is, however, an instrument not only for touching, but also shaping. Richard Serra made the film “Hand catching lead” in 1968. In it, one sees a hand that is trying to catch pieces of lead and form them before letting them fall again. In Serra’s film, the same gesture is repetitively iterated, and no successful or failed products can be detected. Instead, focus is on the process of making, the film becomes a metaphor for sculpting per se. Tina Schulz adopts the film’s gestures and repeats them—however, without lead. What remains are the hand’s seemingly aimless motions, which only make sense when compared with the original film, and become exaggerated by the reduction.
The hand, seen as an object, is the subject’s performing agent—especially when the ego is an artist, such as Heinrich Dunst. In Dunst’s work, the hand does not “act” as it did in Schulz’s, but instead, is addressed. “Hello Hand” says Dunst to the Hand, which he has placed like an exhibit on the table. In a monologue, which he directs just as much to the hand, as the viewer and himself, he attributes the parts of his body functions that they actually do not primarily hold. He delineates a structure of relations that begins with perception and ends with communication—as a metaphor for acting, which keeps thought in balance with physical existence.3
Martin Heidegger wrote on this: “Perhaps thinking, too, is just something like building a shrine. At any rate, it is a “hand-work.” … but the work of the hand is richer than we commonly imagine. The hand does not only grasp and catch, or push and pull. The hand reaches and extends, receives and welcomes—and not just things: the hand extends itself and receives its own welcome in the hands of others. The hand holds. The hand carries. The hand designs and signs, presumably because man is a sign. Two hands fold into one, a gesture meant to carry man into the great oneness. The hand is all this, and this is the true hand-work. Everything is rooted here that is commonly known as handicraft, and commonly we go no further. But the hand’s gestures run everywhere through language, in their most perfect purity precisely when man speaks by being silent.”4
VALIE EXPORT also refers to Heidegger in her video “Visual Text: Finger Poem”, as she loosely quotes him by saying “Ich sage die Zeige mit den Zeichen im Zeigen der Sage” (“I say the showing with the signs by signing the saying”). She performs the sentence with her fingers in “visual sign language”. “The body can thus be used to impart both intellectual as well as physical contents. The body as information medium. The human is adapted to the social structure by the body,” she explains about the intention of her video. And also Franziska Kabisch’s “Deklinationen (Can I inherit my dead parents’ debts?)” is about the social communication surrounding the hand. Beginning from the gallery of professors, which exists at many universities, contemplated is how knowledge production and scientific norms are manifest in postures—especially of the hands—and how they are adopted and continued. This final quote by Martin Heidegger is also from the university context, from a lecture: “It is only to the extent to which man speaks that he thinks and not the other way around, as Metaphysics still thinks. Every motion of the hand in every one of its works carries itself through the element of thinking, every bearing of the hand bears itself in that element. All the work of the hand is rooted in thinking. Therefore, thinking itself is man’s simplest, and for that reason, hardest, hand-work, if it would be accomplished by oneself in time.”5
1 The Gospel of Thomas
2 Helmuth Plessner, Anthropologie der Sinne, (1970), Suhrkamp, 2003
3 “I think and compare; I see with a feeling eye, feel with a seeing hand.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Roman Elegies (1788–1790)
4 Martin Heidegger, “What is Called Thinking?” (1951–1952), trans. J. Glen Gray, Harper Perennial, 1976, pp. 16–17.
5 Ibid.
Franz Graf
»See What Sees You«
Among other things, with exhibits by Franz Graf and Marc Adrian, Estera Alicehajic, Theo Altenberg, Ferdinand Andri, Anouk Lamm Anouk, Nobuyoshi Araki, Magnús Árnason, Johanna Arneth, Snorri Ásmundsson, Rudolf Bacher, Franz Barwig the Elder, Lothar Baumgarten, Selina de Beauclair, Tjorg Douglas Beer, Joseph Beuys, Binär, Herbert Boeckl, Anna-Maria Bogner, Herbert Brandl, Geta Brătescu, Arik Brauer, Günter Brus, William S. Burroughs, James Lee Byars, John Cage, Nina Canell, Ernst Caramelle, Anna Ceeh, Larry Clark, Tamara Dinka, Iris Dostal, Marcel Duchamp, Dejan Dukic, Rudolf Eb.er & Joke Lanz, Valie Export, Helmut Federle, Ernst Fuchs, Walther Gamerith, August Gaul, Ron Geesin & Roger Waters, Gelitin, Liam Gillick & Corinne Jones, Allen Ginsberg, Sara Glaxia, Gottfried Goebel, Karl Iro Goldblat, Martin Grandits, Fritz Grohs, Mario Grubisic, Kristján Guðmundsson, The Guerilla Art Action Group, Tatjana Hardikov, Friedrich Hartlauer, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir, Rudolf Hausner, André Heller, Herbert Hinteregger, Benjamin Hirte, Marcel Houf, Françoise Janicot, Ali Janka, Ana Jelenkovic, Robert Jelinek, Hildegard Joos, Donald Judd, Tillman Kaiser, Felix Kalmar, Allan Kaprow, Mike Kelley, Didi Kern & Philipp Quehenberger, Richard Kern, Leopold Kessler, Martin Kippenberger, Imi Knoebel, Peter Kogler, Franz Koglmann & Bill Dixon, Zenita Komad, Svetlana Kopystiansky, Brigitte Kowanz, Angelika Krinzinger, Elke Silvia Krystufek, Zofia Kulik, Doreen Kutzke, Marcellvs L., Bruce LaBruce, Eskil Loftsson, Daniel Löwenbrück, Sarah Lucas & Julian Simmons, Victor Man, Mark Manders, Michaela Math, marshall!yeti, Otto Maurer, Paul McCarthy, Andrew M. McKenzie, Bjarne Melgaard, Cecilie Meng, Merzbow, Rune Mields, Chiara Minchio, Milan Mladenovic, Klaus Mosettig, Otto Muehl, Wladd Muta, Adam Mühl, Gina Müller, Mario Neugebauer, Hermann Nitsch, Oswald Oberhuber, Erik Oppenheim & David Kelleran, Charlemagne Palestine, Manfred Pernice, Goran Petercol, Rade Petrasevic, Raymond Pettibon, Walter Pichler, Begi Piralishvili, Elisabeth Plank, Natascha Plum, Rudolf Polanszky, Franz Pomassl, Arnulf Rainer, Raionbashi / Krube., Konrad Rapf, Jason Rhodes, Paul-Julien Robert, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Dieter Roth, Fiona Rukschcio, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck, Alexander Ruthner, Gerhard Rühm, Kurt Ryslavy, Nino Sakandelidze, Georg Sallner, Ed Sanders, Markus Schinwald, Eva Schlegel, Conrad Schnitzler, Philipp Schöpke, Claudia Schumann, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Frederike Schweizer, Björn Segschneider, Jim Shaw & Benjamin Weissman, Jörg Siegert, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, Tamuna Sirbiladze, Linnéa Sjöberg, Dominik Steiger, Nino Stelzl, Curt Stenvert, Alexander Stern, Rudolf Stingel, Martina Stoian, Johannes Stoll, Ida Szigethy, Lilli Thießen, Bjarni H. Thórarinsson, Manfred Unger, Franz Vana, Jannis Varelas, Walter Vopava, Wolf Vostell, Klaus Weber, Peter Weibel, Lois Weinberger, Herwig Weiser, Wendy & Jim, Adam Wiener, Ingrid Wiener, Oswald Wiener, John Wiese, Judith Weratschnig, Stefan Wirnsperger, Eva Wohlgemuth, Helmut Wolech, Iwona Zaborowska, Thomas Zipp and Heimo Zobernig
21er Haus, Vienna
January 29 — May 25, 2014
Franz Graf is a thoroughly distinctive artist. He cannot be pigeonholed in any of the usual categories, and his works, indeed his oeuvre, cannot easily be described. He is neither a conceptual artist, painter prince, misunderstood genius, an artist of the state or of the market, nor even a critic of the institutions, and yet he has something of all these traits – and is always one step ahead when it comes to eluding all-too conventional structures and the classifications that go hand in hand with them.
After training under Oswald Oberhuber at the University of Applied Arts Vienna from the mid to late 1970s, he worked with Brigitte Kowanz until 1984 on the fringes of the Neo-Geo movement. In the following years, he evolved a visual language of his own, which, though extremely reduced, has sometimes been described as „expressive geometry“(1). Addressing the most fundamental element of drawing – a dark line on a pale ground – he developed a vocabulary that is essentially based on the juxtaposition of contrasts. Geometric forms and ornamental symbols dominate his works, which became increasingly corporeal towards the end of the 1980s. At the same time, he broadened his technical range, focusing more on the carrier materials such as tracing paper and on the installative integration of the work. He rolled back the classic boundaries of media and art: drawings became sculptures, sculptures became furnishings, furnishings became installations and installations, in turn, became spatial ornamentations. And amongst all this, painting also took on an increasingly important role. Graf is constantly expanding his field of action: curating, music, writing, events, and even teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1997 to 2006.
This intermeshing of art and life is also reflected in his works. Franz Graf sets in motion a visual machine that devours everything that crosses its path. It is like a Machine Célibataire that drives the artist on to become a collector, archaeologist, documentarist, explorer and archivist, creating a world of his own through the synthesis of all his findings. They undergo a seemingly alchemistic process that orders things anew and melds the resulting structures into an idiosyncratic reality. In this universe, all things are one and exist side by side on equal terms, yet are also interwoven. A need for symmetry appears to underpin this cosmos, suggesting a pure and higher order in which moralistic, pecuniary and even worldly laws no longer hold sway. This world order is beyond good and evil and is subject to no ideals or hierarchies, following only the transcendental and the dualism of black and white.
Yet, for all of this, Graf remains true to drawing. Its reductionist form of portrayal permits abstraction in conjunction with depiction, which lends the drawings a certain autonomy from subject matter and signification alone. And this is precisely where Graf begins, using the natural patterns of perception – the instinctive quest for something recognisable – to alienate what we discern from our own reality, allowing it to disintegrate into strokes, lines and planes, as well as ideas and signs. The signifier becomes as visible as the signified and as signifying itself.
Franz Graf pursues this approach on a grand scale in his exhibition at 21er Haus. Processes of perception are unleashed, a cosmos formulated. „See what sees you“ is the motto of this show, which not only showcases Graf‘s works, but which also lays claim to presenting the current state of an artistic universe and putting it into context.
For his exhibition at 21er Haus, Graf dovetails the many aspects of his oeuvre in a new way, playing out his typical game with emptiness and fullness, black and white, delicate detail and iconic grandeur, archaic and modern. Specially created works can be seen here alongside older works, which he has placed together with works by contemporary artists both international and local, as well as pieces from the Belvedere collection and from his own private collection.
Some of his works are figurative. All are black and white, but some also abstract and ornamental. Some are based on circles, almost like mandalas or meditative objects. Others consist of combinations of letters that form fragments of words or quotes, the meaning of which can suddenly emerge, only to be lost from grasp just as quickly and form new meanings. Graf’s handling of letters echoes his handling of figurative subjects. His distinctly eclectic approach in combining elements lends them new form that emerges through his material poetry. The cultural technique of copy-and-paste is one of his stock stylistic devices – appropriation and alienation his accomplices, structure and repetition his accessories. Drawings, photographs, audio works, canvases, prints and everyday objects dovetail in Graf’s formation of open systems that are more akin to aesthetic spaces of experience than multimedia installations.
In the exhibition, eyes gaze at the viewers. Their unsettling gaze is at once seductive, coy, accusatory, fearful and profound. This is not about the eye of Big Brother, but about the image at eye level. Like mirrors, they reflect the gaze back upon the viewer with an intensity that makes seeing the theme in itself: triggering an awareness of our own ways of seeing and, consequently, of our perceptions and apperceptions.
But the title „See what sees you“ also implies reciprocity. It suggests that you can not only see, but be seen (and read) as well. The question this raises was indeed the starting point for the concept of this exhibition: is there a way of seeing that does not involve being distracted by the presentation of our own gaze and the ossification of representative gestures? Practical experience of exhibition openings tells us that there is no escaping this. Either we get used to the idea of coming back alone to have a look, or we try to act naturally and risk being distracted. For the exhibition, we decided to take that risk – by showing the work with all it entails and encompasses, rather than isolating and stylising it.
The framework for this is an architecture of elements normally used for scaffolding or stage construction. The display consists of carrier material that is quite literally used to visualise structures that would otherwise remain in the background. In this respect, there is a symbiosis between the presentation itself and the display of the construct of representation. The sum of the parts not only adds up to an exuberant exhibition in the main room of 21er Haus, but also creates a stage on which Franz Graf constantly expands his installation throughout the duration of the show, by repositioning and rehanging pieces, and with regular performances and collaborative art productions. Visitors thus step onto a stage on which, together with Graf, guest artists and inter-related works, they themselves become actors in a process of ongoing adaptation to an ever-changing situation. But is there more to it than simply being there? Can the exhibition break free from the patterns of representation and offer direct, sensory access to, or perhaps even allow entrance into, the world of Franz Graf? Blessed indeed are they that „have not seen, and yet have believed“(2).
(1) Donald Kuspit, in Franz Graf (exhibition catalogue, Galerie nächst St. Stephan, October 22 – November 26, 1988), Vienna 1988
(2) Gospel according to St John, 20:29
»Sign – Image – Object«
Marc Adrian, Ei Arakawa & Nikolas Gambaroff, Richard Artschwager, Josef Bauer, Martin Beck, Mel Bochner, Marcel Broodthaers, Gerard Byrne, Heinrich Dunst, Jenny Holzer, Lisa Holzer, Johanna Kandl, Michael Kienzer, Joseph Kosuth, Hans Kupelwieser, Thomas Locher, Oswald Oberhuber, Michael Part, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Anja Ronacher, Gerhard Rühm, Allen Ruppersberg, Stefan Sandner, Daniel Spoerri, Josef Hermann Stiegler, Josef Strau, Thaddeus Strode, Peter Weibel, Lawrence Weiner, Heimo Zobernig, Leo Zogmayer
in the context of »Collection #3«, 21er Haus, Vienna, 2013
21er Haus, Vienna
June 21 — November 10, 2013
A museum collection reflects more than the historical vicissitudes of art purchasing policy: it also brings the programmatic direction of an institution into focus. At the 21er Haus, Austrian art is shown in an international context. Contemporary work is at the center of attention, supported by historical artworks which together with it represent a line of argument for its relevance in the here and now.
In order to make visible the diversity of the museum’s holdings, to rediscover artworks and think toward new relationships, the collection is reorganized at regular intervals. In the third presentation of the collection at the 21er Haus, the artworks are grouped into three areas, each of them centering on three concepts narrating localized histories of ideas that extend into the present.
Under the title Freedom – Form – Abstraction, works of Austrian postwar modernism are juxtaposed with contemporary artistic positions, demonstrating commonalities in both content and form. A second area directs the gaze toward the blurring of boundaries between Sign – Image – Object, thereby focusing attention on the structure of reception and its translation into language. Finally, Body – Psyche – Performativity addresses social norms and their transgression in art since the 1960s.
The area Sign – Image – Object attempts to capture the fruitful moments in which the boundaries between image and sign, writing and language, object and idea are transgressed.
What happens when image and sign collide, both being seen and read at the same time? What happens when an object no longer coincides with the beholder’s idea or mental representation of it? Is an image an object, a space of illusion, or itself a sign? When does a sign become an ornament, and can it completely lose its meaning when it is isolated or recontextualized? Can language be depicted without writing, or does it then remain a mute visualization?
To be explored is the interplay between signified and signifier, in other word between that which labels and that which is labeled, and the ambiguous status of sign, image and object, which has been thematized in art since the Conceptual movement of the 1960s. Not only do these queries address art and its reality; they also direct attention toward the process of perception. Outlines emerge of the ways in which we translate what we see into language, and of the interactions that are triggered in our thoughts by what we have seen.
»Zeichen – Bild – Objekt«
Marc Adrian, Ei Arakawa & Nikolas Gambaroff, Richard Artschwager, Josef Bauer, Martin Beck, Mel Bochner, Marcel Broodthaers, Gerard Byrne, Heinrich Dunst, Jenny Holzer, Lisa Holzer, Johanna Kandl, Michael Kienzer, Joseph Kosuth, Hans Kupelwieser, Thomas Locher, Oswald Oberhuber, Michael Part, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Anja Ronacher, Gerhard Rühm, Allen Ruppersberg, Stefan Sandner, Daniel Spoerri, Josef Hermann Stiegler, Josef Strau, Thaddeus Strode, Peter Weibel, Lawrence Weiner, Heimo Zobernig, Leo Zogmayer
im Rahmen von »Sammlung #3«
21er Haus, Wien
21. Juni — 10. November 2013
Eine Kunstsammlung spiegelt nicht nur die Geschichte einer oft wechselvollen Ankaufspolitik wider, ihre Präsentation verdeutlicht gleichzeitig auch die Programmatik einer Institution. Im 21er Haus wird österreichische Kunst im internationalen Kontext gezeigt. Zeitgenössisches steht im Zentrum und wird unterstützt von historischen Arbeiten, die gemeinsam eine Beweisführung für ihre Relevanz im Hier und Jetzt darlegen. Um die Vielseitigkeit des Bestandes sichtbar zu machen, Werke wiederzuentdecken und neue Nachbarschaften anzudenken, wird die Sammlung in regelmäßigen Abständen neu aufgestellt. In der dritten Sammlungspräsentation im 21er Haus umkreisen die Werke in drei Bereichen jeweils drei Begriffe, die lokale Ideengeschichten bis in die Gegenwart erzählen.
Unter dem Titel Freiheit – Form – Abstraktion werden Werke der österreichischen Nachkriegsmoderne zeitgenössischen Positionen gegenübergestellt und inhaltliche wie formale Gemeinsamkeiten aufgezeigt. Ein zweiter Bereich lenkt den Blick auf das Verschwimmen der Grenzen zwischen Zeichen – Bild – Objekt und verweist dabei auf die Struktur der Rezeption und ihre Übersetzung in Sprache. Körper – Psyche – Performanz handelt schließlich von sozialen Normierungen und deren Überschreitung in der Kunst seit den 1960er-Jahren.
Der Bereich Zeichen – Bild – Objekt versucht den fruchtbaren Moment zu fassen, wenn die Grenzen zwischen Bild und Zeichen, Schrift und Sprache, Objekt und Idee überschritten werden. Was passiert, wenn Bild und Zeichen aufeinandertreffen, zeitgleich gelesen und gesehen werden? Was, wenn ein Objekt nicht mit der Idee oder der Vorstellung, die man davon hat, übereinstimmt? Ist das Bild ein Objekt, ein Illusionsraum oder selbst ein Zeichen? Wann wird das Zeichen zum Ornament, und kann es überhaupt seine Bedeutung verlieren, indem man es isoliert oder neu kontextualisiert? Und kann man Sprache darstellen, ohne zu schreiben, oder bleibt es dann bei einer stummen Visualisierung? Es geht um das Spiel zwischen Signifikat und Signifikant, also Bezeichnetem und Bezeichnendem, und deren ungeklärten Status zwischen Zeichen, Bild und Objekt, der seit der Konzeptkunst der 1960er-Jahre thematisiert wird. Aber mit diesen Fragestellungen werden nicht nur Kunst und ihre Realität verhandelt, sondern wird auch auf den Prozess der Wahrnehmung verwiesen. Dabei wird deutlich, wie wir das Gesehene in Sprache übersetzen und welche Wechselwirkungen in unserem Denken über das Betrachtete ausgelöst werden.