Tue Greenfort

‘A Mountain Story’

Kunstraum Dornbirn

14 September – 4 November 2012

This exhibition of the Danish artist brings together a series of stories on the production of art and culture, on ecology and economics, and links them with questions about (meanwhile) watered-down categories such as sustainability and the concept of nature, thus weaving them into a filigree web of overlapping themes and figurations. His formal starting point is the history and locality of Kunstraum Dornbirn, which he invests with a new spatial structure.
A structure that was formerly a factory assembly hall. Built in 1893, it had the purpose of simplifying the work process and also rationalizing it. A motivating economic force that is today mentioned in one breath with the loss of workplaces, but has an aspect that parallels ecology. Namely, here too, the issue is about applying resources sparingly, exactly like the dome that the artist has placed in the room. The seemingly contrasting motives behind economics and ecology team up here, but also raise questions. Just as does the exhibition title as well as the works assembled under its mantle.
When you reach a mountaintop, have you conquered nature or had a nature experience? What does the history of mountain climbing have to do with ecology, hippie dreams and dystopias? How can we confront the excesses of capitalism? By a do-it-yourself culture? Where does the (hi)story of ecology stop and the (hi)stories of rationalism begin? Can nature only be understood within a culture? How do you undermine boredom in contemporary art? What would Buckminster Fuller say? By way of a geodesic dome? And is this dome larger than a sculpture? Is it architecture or an artistic intervention?
Greenfort throws questions into the ring instead of providing answers and leaves it to viewers to come to their own conclusions. He hereby calls the institutional norms of contemporary art in question, likewise the function of art per se and the prerogative of interpretation that is linked to it. This is not about showing something true, good or beautiful, and certainly not at all about the visitor having to believe, or go along with, something. Rather the artist is interested in the democratization of a cognitive process, and thus concerns the emancipation of the viewer who must naturally also learn to deal with this.
Greenfort doesn’t see himself so much as an artist but more as a person who sets processes in motion and triggers reflection, deliberation, cerebration. As to the dome on view, it is also not clear how it should be defined. Is it an artwork by Tue Greenfort or architecture by Buckminster Fuller? In any case Greenfort has placed it in the room, and the question gets posed as to whether it is important that something be declared art or whether it’s not sufficient that, beginning from there, we can think about objects.
As already briefly mentioned, the dome was built from Richard Buckminster Fuller’s plans. He exhibited a 62m-high version of the building called a “geodesic dome” in 1967 at the World’s Fair in Montreal and quickly became famous. And not just because of its spectacular appearance, but for the idea behind it. He was concerned to produce the best possible functional structure with the least resources (the concept of synergetics and its effect originated with him); e.g., the exterior surface of the dome is 40 % smaller than a building with the same square base would need. The geodesic form was quickly taken up by hippies who began to build their own domes from castoff materials.
Here Greenfort uses sheets of tarpaulin such as the kind from construction sites, including the advertisements printed on them. Similar to the idea of the Friday bags, this tarpaulin is recycled and reused as covering; ads can be seen on the outside that however no longer animate us to consume and then throw away, but at the most to shield us from rain.
Now what does this have to do with climbing mountains? Recreation in nature was already in fashion in the early 19th century; the Austrian Alpine Club was founded in 1862. In a continuation, an increase in expeditions to higher regions took place, such as the Himalayas, where contact was made with the local mountain people. Cultures in barren regions are characterized by an extremely sparse and efficient lifestyle. This perception, among other things, led to the fact that alpinists in the 20th century were not just engaged in conquering the mountains but began to think not only about how to leave nature untouched, but also how to conserve it. The eco movement built on this, and naturally the hippies who recreated Buckminster Fuller’s domes.
Another model can be seen in front of the dome, also by Tue Greenfort, this time following a lightweight tent construction by Frei Otto from 1957. The point also with Tent (2007) is to produce functional architecture that conjures room for people out of advertising tarpaulin by means of a pair of poles, ropes and castoff material.
Also to be seen – but more to be heard – is the sound installation Audio System (2011), for which microphones have been installed inside and outside the Kunstraum. The signals are routed through a computer, which superimposes an audio filter and directs the signals per random generator back into the room where the different sounds are woven into a soundscape. Nature and people are brought into the room acoustically, which is otherwise more likely dominated by reverent silence.
Also with the work Conservation (2011) the artist allows the antithesis between nature and museum to cross swords. Normally the museum tries to safeguard and preserve the exhibited objects. The staff wants to get rid of woodworm and similar vermin. Wood, which is actually a living material, is deadened and made ready for eternity. Quite in contrary to the wood Greenfort uses, which is kept under a glass dome and inhabited by wood beetles, wood whose sheltered disintegration we can practically watch. At one time or other, only a pile of sawdust will remain under the glass. The issue here is time and the naturalness of transience, which also suggests a formal analogue to the hourglass. Whereby it is also not quite clear if the Kunstraum is in this way protected from the wood beetles or the beetles from the visitors.
The work Untitled (2010) is likewise a memento mori, but even more a discrete omen. From a bottle, 10 liters of alcohol can be withdrawn in small dosages and burnt in a bowl meant for this purpose. Ten liters: that is an Austrian’s average annual consumption. And the beaker with which the alcohol is poured allows us to realize that one needs 1,800 kilocalories daily in order to live, which corresponds to 15.7 cl. of alcohol. Many people, for instance in the third world, do not have this amount of sustenance at their disposal.
With this exhibition, Tue Greenfort has not only assembled items, but tried to create a structure. The objects should not be seen as art, but as a process. This is a project that is borne by many minds, not by individuality. Whether these be the historical positions, the coworkers, theorists and philosophers that have contributed their part to the way the exhibition looks or the visitors themselves: it is about the many stories – also the visitors’ personal ones – that generate the interaction. And thus creates a consciousness of the fact that one is part of a tradition and a (hi)story. And the exhibition not only revolves around history and stories, but attempts to be a narration, a process in itself: an open, at times chaotic but dynamic entity, without an abrupt beginning or end.

Andy Boot

‘Überfläche’

21er Raum at 21er Haus, Vienna

14 November — 9 December 2012

Überfläche (Übersurface) is the title of this exhibition by Andy Boot. The title suggests two things: firstly, that there is something that lies above the surface, and secondly, that this something is sublime. In our present-day life, which continually surrounds us with images, the underground is less and less able to break through all its smooth and shiny surfaces. It is not that the human being has been made transparent by surveillance, but that the individual has become a media entity. Andy Boot’s investigation of surfaces and patterns corresponds with this progressive blurring of the boundary between being, presenting and representing.
But what surfaces are to be seen in Boot’s exhibition? There is, for instance, the Bacterio pattern, designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1978, which withdraws from unequivocal identification and oscillates between the abstract and the figurative. The designer used it as a laminate for his Memphis furniture, as a means of negating materiality and structure, and in repetition as an industrial pattern, elevating it to the status of an antiform of its own. Boot applies the pattern to a sculpture mounted on rollers, which itself is made out of a supporting material – in this case shelves. On another occasion it appears as an object at rest within itself: as pure laminate, unsure as to whether it should be material or surface. In sharpies thumb a canvas is unpretentiously painted over in black; upon its surface Boot has mounted a photo showing two youths who in the course of perpetrating an unsuccessful burglary colored over their faces with a felt-tip pen to mask their identities. Here the gesture of overpainting doubly marks the fine line along which surface balances: between beautifying and disguising. Untitled also plays with this tension, and here again on two levels. A bronze cast of a makeup item is set in a wooden board, alienating and disguising its original function. And yet the surface structure of the makeup continues to transport the character of the product, which wanted to be applied to the skin. Another sculpture presents not makeup, but a backup – at the same time it marks the end of a container and conceals the space behind it, similarly to a work on canvas primed in white, except for an X that has been painted onto it. As a symbol borrowed from a graphic program, the X serves as a placeholder for an image yet to be defined, here for a self-referential metaphor of acrylic on canvas. A further definition of image and painting is found in a canvas painted light-blue, upon which Boot has put little cat stickers. Here the gestural aspect of abstraction is treated ironically as the mere covering up of the surface, while the stickers on it invite one to touch their furry surfaces: Boot’s decoration would like to be understood as sensuous figuration. The largest work in the exhibition also ventures a jibe at Pollock: in e who remained was M, Boot drops noodles dipped into paint onto the canvas. This produces a neo-abstract-expressionist pattern, which on account of its absurdity degrades the gestural to mere ornament, thus opening the floodgates for illusionism in his paintings. Something similar happens in Untitled (ambassador), a concrete cylinder in whose top side the inner space of a martini glass (after a design by Oswald Haerdtl) has been left open as a concave – robbed of its function, it is only readable as a sign.
In Andy Boot’s work, the querying of surface’s status also entails reflection on materiality and functionality. Through the transformation of patterns in materials, gestures and painting in ornament and decoration, and all of this vice-versa as well, he puts our perception of surface above both form and function. Ornament and its repetition is no longer a crime, rather a reflection of reality. A reality in which being, self-presentation and self-representation have become increasingly blurred, where even the ego itself is visualized and lived as a mediatized entity. The individual has become a screen with the largest possible surface, an Überfläche: I am the message, because I am the medium.

Andy Boot, born in 1987 in Sydney, Australia, lives and works in Vienna. Recently he has presented solo shows at Croy Nielsen in Berlin and at Renwick Gallery in New York.

Exhibition catalogue:
21er Raum 2012 – 2016
Edited by Agnes Husslein-Arco and Severin Dünser
Including texts by Severin Dünser, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Paul Feigelfeld, Agnes Husslein-Arco, Lili Reynaud-Dewar and Luisa Ziaja on exhibitions by Anna-Sophie Berger, Andy Boot, Vittorio Brodmann, Andy Coolquitt, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Iman Issa, Barbara Kapusta, Susanne Kriemann, Adriana Lara, Till Megerle, Adrien Missika, Noële Ody, Sarah Ortmeyer, Mathias Pöschl, Rosa Rendl, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Anja Ronacher, Constanze Schweiger, Zin Taylor, Philipp Timischl, Rita Vitorelli and Salvatore Viviano
Graphic design by Atelier Liska Wesle, Vienna/Berlin
German/Englisch
Softcover, 21 × 29,7 cm, 272 pages, numerous illustrations in color
Belvedere, Vienna, 2016
ISBN 978-3-903114-18-0

Constanze Schweiger

‘Scrollwork’

21er Raum at 21er Haus, Vienna

20 December 2012 — 13 January 2013

The exhibition Scrollwork by Constanze Schweiger revolves around various aesthetic phenomena related to painting, fashion and social ties. The artist translates specific elements from her blog (constanzeschweiger.blogspot.co.at) into exhibition objects and its texts into printed form. In the same way as Scrollwork sometimes resembles acanthus leaves, sometimes an abstract pattern, the exhibition oscillates between objects that tend in different directions and yet still form a coherent whole.
The slide projection Peppermint, Cheerleader oder Schlechtes Gewissen [Peppermint, Cheerleader or Bad Conscience] shows color charts made by the artist. For the work, Schweiger transfered all the acrylic colors she uses in her paintings on square cards, to be able to appraise the chromaticity after drying - a reflection upon production, while refering to the rich suggestivity of color names with the title of her work. Furthermore displayed on the table: Sox by Michael Part, a picture by Nicolas Jasmin,  a photo of a plant in front of a pattern, trousers, paint on shoes, two textiles, a book, a wall clock, a record, a color chart, a postcard and an older publication by the artist.
The particular exhibits are connected by Schweiger‘s blog  and a new publication (free to take). It contains the artist‘s blog texts on individual things, out of which an all-over re-evolves: a continuous meta-ornament, the Scrollwork.

Constanze Schweiger, born 1970 in Salzburg, lives and works in Vienna. Recent exhibitions include shows at school, Vienna (2012); Museum der Moderne Mönchsberg, Salzburg (2012); Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna (2011); Ve.Sch, Vienna (2011) and Magazin, Vienna (2010).

Exhibition catalogue:
21er Raum 2012 – 2016
Edited by Agnes Husslein-Arco and Severin Dünser
Including texts by Severin Dünser, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Paul Feigelfeld, Agnes Husslein-Arco, Lili Reynaud-Dewar and Luisa Ziaja on exhibitions by Anna-Sophie Berger, Andy Boot, Vittorio Brodmann, Andy Coolquitt, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Iman Issa, Barbara Kapusta, Susanne Kriemann, Adriana Lara, Till Megerle, Adrien Missika, Noële Ody, Sarah Ortmeyer, Mathias Pöschl, Rosa Rendl, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Anja Ronacher, Constanze Schweiger, Zin Taylor, Philipp Timischl, Rita Vitorelli and Salvatore Viviano
Graphic design by Atelier Liska Wesle, Vienna/Berlin
German/Englisch
Softcover, 21 × 29,7 cm, 272 pages, numerous illustrations in color
Belvedere, Vienna, 2016
ISBN 978-3-903114-18-0

Anja Ronacher

‘Void’

21er Raum at 21er Haus, Vienna

23 January — 24 February 2013

“I operate under the assumption that at the basis of the photographic image there is a desire,” says Anja Ronacher, whereby she understands desire as an evolutionary product of archaic needs. These same needs are satisfied by the containing vessel, of which Heidegger writes: “The void is that aspect the vessel which holds. This emptiness, this nothing within the jug, is what the jug is as a holding vessel.” Furthermore, he describes the thing in itself through nearness: “In nearness is that which we are accustomed to calling a thing. But what is a thing? Man has given as little thought to the thing as a thing as he has to nearness.”(1)
Thus, in a certain sense, Anja Ronacher’s photographs are also placeholders for the void, for the signifier that the vessel stands for. That relates to our elementary needs; we have, as it were, a natural relationship of nearness to this thing. The same is true of fabric, which we approach primarily via the haptic. Ronacher’s photographs of drapery play on the absence of a body, despite the fact that textiles are indivisibly associated with corporeality. “The work of draping is a slow advance toward form, which is both being worked upon and is occurring.” And, Ronacher continues, “the way in which time occurs in images is also twofold: in the time of working on the material and in the time of the exposure.” The time of exposure determines the degree of darkness. Draping is a work of lessening and reduction, “a return to the depth of the world,”(2) as Deleuze notes in an essay on Leibniz. In photography, the fold becomes form without matter, a “disembodied similarity,”(3) as Maurice Blanchot writes. Similarly, the artist’s photographs of archeological objects and vessels demonstrate a simultaneous presence and absence in the images, whereby the producers of the things and the draperies are also unknown: depersonalized and deaurafied (in accord with Ronacher’s ideal of the artist).
The object comes before the image, and thus the image becomes a site of loss and of invocation: an invocation of the magical, the uncontemporary, the historical. “The point is, the image doesn’t define itself through the sublimeness of its content, but through its form – its “internal tension” – or through the force it gathers to make the void or to bore holes, to loosen the grip of words, to dry up the oozing of voices, so as to disengage itself from memory and reason: a little alogical image, amnesic, almost aphasic, now standing in the void, now shivering in the open,”(4) writes Deleuze. Like photography, the vessel is grounded in its negative. In the vessel this negative is an emptiness, a gap: “void”.

(1) Martin Heidegger, “The Thing”
(2) Gilles Deleuze, “The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque”
(3) Maurice Blanchot, “The Two Versions of the Imaginary”
(4) Gilles Deleuze, “The Exhausted”, in Samuel Beckett, “Quad” (plays for television)

Anja Ronacher, born in Salzburg in 1979, lives and works in Vienna. She studied photography at the Royal College of Art in London and the Estonian Academy of Arts in Talinn, as well as scenography at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Her works have recently been shown at Beers Lambert Contemporary, London (2012), Museum of Modern Art Salzburg (2010), Salzburger Kunstverein (2010) and Fotohof Salzburg (2009).

Exhibition catalogue:
21er Raum 2012 – 2016
Edited by Agnes Husslein-Arco and Severin Dünser
Including texts by Severin Dünser, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Paul Feigelfeld, Agnes Husslein-Arco, Lili Reynaud-Dewar and Luisa Ziaja on exhibitions by Anna-Sophie Berger, Andy Boot, Vittorio Brodmann, Andy Coolquitt, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Iman Issa, Barbara Kapusta, Susanne Kriemann, Adriana Lara, Till Megerle, Adrien Missika, Noële Ody, Sarah Ortmeyer, Mathias Pöschl, Rosa Rendl, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Anja Ronacher, Constanze Schweiger, Zin Taylor, Philipp Timischl, Rita Vitorelli and Salvatore Viviano
Graphic design by Atelier Liska Wesle, Vienna/Berlin
German/Englisch
Softcover, 21 × 29,7 cm, 272 pages, numerous illustrations in color
Belvedere, Vienna, 2016
ISBN 978-3-903114-18-0

‘Love Story’

Anne & Wolfgang Titze Collection

Marina Abramovic, David Altmejd, Carl Andre, Matthew Barney, Georg Baselitz, Valérie Belin, Larry Bell, Matthew Brannon, James Lee Byars, John Chamberlain, Nigel Cooke, Richard Deacon, Thomas Demand, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Olafur Eliasson, Dan Flavin, Lucio Fontana,  Barnaby Furnas, Adrian Ghenie, Antony Gormley, Rodney Graham, Kevin Francis Gray, Andreas Gursky, Wade Guyton, Guyton/Walker, Eberhard Havekost, Thomas Helbig, Gregor Hildebrandt, Shirazeh Houshiary, Nathan Hylden, Kathleen Jacobs, Donald Judd, Anish Kapoor, Jacob Kassay, Anselm Kiefer, Yayoi Kusama, Claude Lévêque, Sherrie Levine, Sol LeWitt, Robert Longo, Sarah Lucas, Robert Mangold, Piero Manzoni, Christian Marclay, Agnes Martin, John McCracken, Adam McEwen, Julie Mehretu, Mario Merz, Matthew Monahan, Robert Morris, Gabriel Orozco, Damián Ortega, Giulio Paolini, Adam Pendleton, Joyce Pensato, Grayson Perry, Paola Pivi, Jaume Plensa, Seth Price, Rashid Rana, Gerhard Richter, Charles Ross, Sterling Ruby, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, Wilhelm Sasnal, Thomas Scheibitz, Sean Scully, Dirk Skreber, Tony Smith, Peter Stauss, Frank Stella, Rudolf Stingel, Wolfgang Tillmans, Günther Uecker, Bernar Venet, Kelley Walker, Jeff Wall, Rebecca Warren, Lawrence Weiner, Rachel Whiteread, Christopher Williams, Christopher Wool, Erwin Wurm, Lisa Yuskavage, Toby Ziegler, Thomas Zipp, Heimo Zobernig; curated by Severin Dünser and Luisa Ziaja

Belvedere Winterpalais and 21er Haus, Vienna

15 June — 5 October 2014

As hinted at in the title, the exhibition revolves around a passion: the passion connecting the French-Austrian collecting couple Anne and Wolfgang Titze and fine arts.  This special relationship began rather cautiously regarding certain forms of expression and materials, such as the formal coolness of Minimal and Concept Art of the 1960s. Through an intense involvement – also with the more easily accessible Arte Povera – a common passion grew out of initial reservations and flowered into an outstanding art collection. Some 20 years later, Minimal and Conceptual Art as well as Arte Povera are still at the heart of the collection that meanwhile has been purposefully extended to include the most current developments. This is the first public appearance of a selection of ca. 130 works of around 90 artists, in a charming interplay between the baroque interior of the Winterpalais and the modern pavilion architecture of the 21er Haus.
At the center of the exhibition at the 21er Haus, works by the pioneers of reduction of the 1950s, Minimal and Conceptual Art of the 1960s converge. Recent trends in painting, sculpture and photography revolve around this junction and re-adopt issues of body, space, gesture and image. A steel sculpture by Bernar Venet, located between Upper Belvedere and castle pond, confronts historical architecture and contemporary form – a leitmotif that is continued in the Winterpalais. There, the site-specific presentation brings conceptual and figurative painterly approaches, such as post-war German art, works of Arte Povera, modern and post-modern sculpture in a variety of materials as well as current imagery in dialogue with the former residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy.
Between the white museum wall and gilded stucco the exhibits unfold an interaction of appealing contrasts, which here and there opens up new perspectives both on the spaces as well as on the works staged in them.

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

29 January — 25 May 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

Sarah Ortmeyer

‘KOKO PARADISE’

21er Raum at 21er Haus, Vienna

5 February — 17 April 2016

KOKO PARADISE is the final part of an exhibition triptych by Sarah Ortmeyer. At different times and in three different places (Paris, New York and Vienna), the KOKO trilogy deals with escapism and avarice. KOKO PARADISE shows palm trees in a tableau that is as beautiful as it is sad.

Sarah Ortmeyer was born in 1980 and lives in Vienna. Her works have been exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2016), the Monnaie de Paris (2015), the Swiss Institute, New York (2014), the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013), the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent (2012), the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2012), the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2011), the MAK Center, Los Angeles (2010), the Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam (2009) and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2009), among others. A new project in collaboration with Andrew Wyatt will open this Valentine’s Day at the MoMA PS1 in New York City.

Exhibition catalogue:
21er Raum 2012 – 2016
Edited by Agnes Husslein-Arco and Severin Dünser
Including texts by Severin Dünser, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Paul Feigelfeld, Agnes Husslein-Arco, Lili Reynaud-Dewar and Luisa Ziaja on exhibitions by Anna-Sophie Berger, Andy Boot, Vittorio Brodmann, Andy Coolquitt, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Iman Issa, Barbara Kapusta, Susanne Kriemann, Adriana Lara, Till Megerle, Adrien Missika, Noële Ody, Sarah Ortmeyer, Mathias Pöschl, Rosa Rendl, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Anja Ronacher, Constanze Schweiger, Zin Taylor, Philipp Timischl, Rita Vitorelli and Salvatore Viviano
Graphic design by Atelier Liska Wesle, Vienna/Berlin
German/Englisch
Softcover, 21 × 29,7 cm, 272 pages, numerous illustrations in color
Belvedere, Vienna, 2016
ISBN 978-3-903114-18-0

Simon Dybbroe Møller

‘Lettuce’

21er Raum at 21er Haus, Vienna

5 December 2015 — 31 January 2016

We look at everything with photography. When we see a black piece of marble, often used in wet spaces and at memorial sites—bathrooms, kitchens, and graves—we notice its glossiness. It is so photographic. Look at its white veins, the snail shells, the mussels. See how it resembles a print made from a damaged negative. This is photography avant la lettre.

Of course, photography is different now. The growing breed of male tech enthusiasts posting online reviews of new camera equipment is inhabiting a complicated territory. In order to investigate and discuss the visual capabilities of the constant stream of new digital gear, they have to point their lenses towards something; they have to choose a motif. They mostly choose women or birds.

A cormorant drying its wings on an old withered wooden pole, for instance: the Jesus-like silhouette and the pride of its posture mirrored in the water surface. A truly pathetic image. It is said that the cormorant is the most ancient bird around; that it dates back to the dinosaurs. That unlike other aquatic birds it has not developed the oil sheen that would protect it from getting soaked, hence the crucifix-like pose: it does so to dry its feathers in the breeze. What an anachronism. A more constructive voice would frame it differently and explain how most creatures are naturally buoyant, but how for diving birds  this is an issue. The cormorant is thought to swallow pebbles to increase its weight. Its main adaptation, though, is its open feather structure that does not trap buoyancy-increasing air but absorbs water instead. Regardless: imagine soaked feathers. Conversely imagine water droplets on a water-repellent surface. Let us think about this in relation to analogue and to digital image making.

Perhaps the wet white t-shirt was the climax of old world sleaziness. A last spasm of the analog, before our descent into the weight- and age-less universe of silicone and botox, the taxidermy of the technosphere; Into the waxed universe of the virtual. Do you remember Sabrina and Boys Boys Boys? Can you recall Samantha Fox? The way those singers exploited white cotton and water to produce images of their hefty bodies both concealed and enhanced. Images that seemed to transcend the slick surface of the glossy magazines by echoing the fluidity of analog processing and the stickiness of the emulsion coat of a photographic print. Tits and ass or draperie mouillée. A century earlier the realist Constantin Emile Meunier modeled his monumental sculpture The Dock Worker, depicting the toned figure of his subject draped in moist, clingy garments. In this fantasy even the soggy is solid, the saturated is steely. The patina of the bronze reminiscent of a vintage sepia toned black-and-white print; the lack of tonality melting the body with the cloth.

It is surely no coincidence that perfectly contained drops of liquid sitting on surfaces of things feature so heavily in digital image making tutorials. Like the techy garments used in the outdoor sports industry, these images inhabit a landscape of impenetrability. We know that the perfect water drops on the bright green leaves adorning our computer desktops did not occur naturally. That they were placed there, then elaborately lit. Possibly they are not water at all but either gelatin or resin or pure digital post-
production. Even when sitting on an absorbent surface they do not soak things; they do not evaporate into the air. We are dealing with digital image making here, with ideals. No earth to earth, but a world where things have borders, a world without entropy, a universe without decay. Like fresh lettuce lying on a minimalist polished steel kitchen countertop - its white veins piercing through the neon green translucent hue of its leaves, its objecthood amplified by the mirroring metal surface - so low in calories that digesting it requires the same amount of energy as it contains.

— Simon Dybbroe Møller

Simon Dybbroe Møller grew up in Greenland and lives in Berlin. His works have been exhibited most recently at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Musee d’Art Contemporain de la Ville de Paris, at the Kunsthaus Glarus in Switzerland, and at Ludlow 38 in New York (all in 2015). Upcoming exhibitions of his works are hosted by Le Plateau in Paris, MOCA Cleveland, as well as the Kunsthalle São Paulo.

Exhibition catalogue:
21er Raum 2012 – 2016
Edited by Agnes Husslein-Arco and Severin Dünser
Including texts by Severin Dünser, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Paul Feigelfeld, Agnes Husslein-Arco, Lili Reynaud-Dewar and Luisa Ziaja on exhibitions by Anna-Sophie Berger, Andy Boot, Vittorio Brodmann, Andy Coolquitt, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Iman Issa, Barbara Kapusta, Susanne Kriemann, Adriana Lara, Till Megerle, Adrien Missika, Noële Ody, Sarah Ortmeyer, Mathias Pöschl, Rosa Rendl, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Anja Ronacher, Constanze Schweiger, Zin Taylor, Philipp Timischl, Rita Vitorelli and Salvatore Viviano
Graphic design by Atelier Liska Wesle, Vienna/Berlin
German/Englisch
Softcover, 21 × 29,7 cm, 272 pages, numerous illustrations in color
Belvedere, Vienna, 2016
ISBN 978-3-903114-18-0

‘Das Anliegen’ 

[The Concern]

Erwin Auer, Bernhard Cella, Peter Fritzenwallner, Erich Gruber, Gerhard Himmer, Simon Iurino, Stefan Klampfer, Nathalie Koger, Anna Meyer, Amy Oestlund, Felix Pöchhacker, Markus Proschek, Bernhard Resch, Anja Ronacher, Anna Schwarz, Annelies Senfter, Tom Streit

Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg

12 December 2015 — 7 February 2016

Art’s social value is reflected in its tendency to give shape to the present and to set new ideas in motion. We might identify the point of departure for artistic production as that of concern. This is therefore what the 2015 annual members’ exhibition was devoted to: Which concerns are the artist members of the Salzburger Kunstverein presently dealing with? And how are these concerns manifested in artworks? This exhibition tried to assemble works mirroring the complexity of individual concerns and artistic practices revolving around the Kunstverein.

Michael Part

‘Mercury et al.’

21er Haus, Vienna

5 December 2015 — 17 January 2016

Michael Part works with and about photography. His concentration on the technical requirements of the medium is closely connected to the early history of analog photography. The title of Part's exhibition, ‘Mercury et al.’, names an element that was used in daguerreotype to bring out the image during the final stage of the process.
Developed between 1835 and 1839, daguerreotype is considered the first viable photographic process. A plate coated in silver halide is inserted into a camera; the molecular structure of the silver halide crystals is destabilized by exposure to light, which leads to the silver halide being reduced into metallic silver. Subsequently, the image on the plate is enhanced with mercury vapor. The result is a daguerreotype; the silver areas are where there was little exposure to light. As no negative is used, the image is inverted and unique. In contrast, the silver gelatin process does not involve the silver halide being reduced to metallic silver due to light exposure, but due to the application of a developer fluid. Selenium can be used to influence the levels of contrast and coloring. Selenium converts the silver into silver selenide, which is a chemically more stable compound than pure silver and makes photographs more durable and hence more suitable for archives. lt is precisely this selenium that is at the fore in a series of Michael Part's works: silver mirrors on which colorful patterns catch the eye. The way in which the mirrors were produced resembles the silver gelatin process: in both processes, the source material is silver nitrate and the result metallic silver. However, the surface of the mirror does not capture an image with light; instead, selenium is used in an aqueous solution, as is the case with silver gelatin prints. As a result, various patterns emerge that render the use of selenium visible and hence illustrate a chemical process without portraying any motifs - since nothing was exposed to light.
To supplement the mirror process, which Iacks any apparatus, the slide installation ‘Untitled (Sodium dithionite et al.)’ has equipment at its core. On a pedestal is a projection stand in which two slide projectors are mounted. From it, a sequence of images is cast onto the walls opposite; those images refer to further photographic methods and contextualize the production process of the reflecting works displayed on the outer walls both in terms of content and form (namely via their textures).
The works by Michael Part question what the photographic image is; what its role is, above all in terms of documentary purposes; how it differs from other media; and what a photograph as a "light drawing" actually constitutes. His works achieve this by means of experimental configurations that combine the substances around the imaging methods in new ways. The function of chemicals is subverted without losing sight of their relation to photography and their history. What photography can depict is suspended; at what point photography becomes an image is called into question. Where that can be determined from a technical point of view, and whether it is defined as developing or enhancing, is more of a rhetorical question. After all, Part did not use the mercury of the title in his works – which is probably for the best, since the lives of the first daguerreotypists were indeed cut short as a consequence of their work with mercury vapor. In the style of the various treatment methods, however, Part advances a narrative that on the one hand lies beyond the depiction of motifs, and on the other makes the chemical processes themselves the subject of his images – an endeavor that could literally be described as "drawing with light."

Michael Part, born in 1979, lives in Vienna. Recently his works could be seen in ‘Para/Fotografie’ at the Westfälischer Kunstverein (2015), ‘The day will come when photography revises’ at the Kunstverein in Hamburg (2015), ‘green postcard’ for lbid Projects, London (2015), ‘e.g., 2005-2014’ at Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2014) and ‘Occupy Painting’ at Autocenter, Berlin (2014).