Teilen
English summary July 21 - 28
daadgalerie: Douglas Gordon, Phillippe Parreno – Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
Ten Ace King
King football is alive. Despite the summer break, during which the kickers disappear from the scene to get in shape for the next season. But a “real king” even outshines this football-free time: a king by the name of Zidane. He is currently on-screen in “Zidane. A 21st Century Portrait” produced by Douglas Gordon and Phillippe Parreno and shown at the daadgalerie in Berlin. They chose the king among kinglike players and captured his outstanding talent with their high technology cameras at a Real Madrid match in 2005: the 17 cameras were all directed at Zidane, each operated by the best cameramen available (among them one of Scorsese’s operators). A microphone was put into one of his socks to catch all of his steps - both acoustically as well as visually.
What evolved is oddly ambivalent: through this exclusive focus on Zidane he is now not only the well-known commander on the field, but at times merely a “football-worker” – someone who sometimes offers his assistance to no avail, who runs many kilometres in vain, sweat dripping from his body. This complete media concentration at times even results in a disenchantment of the football magician Zidane. His king-like image is not so much God-given (except for his talent), as it is media-given. And the media make it appear in a most favorable light.
The bizarre part of this film comes at the end when Zidane suddenly attacks one of his competitors like a wild bull. Maybe the normally introverted and reserved Zidane, who of course knew that he was being filmed, was much more media-conscious than one would assume. And maybe the attack against Matarazzi had less to do with saving his family honour than it did with his worry about making a great exit. In any case - it did the trick.
daadgalerie
10117 Berlin, Zimmerstrasse 90 – 91, until 09. 08. 2008
www.berliner-kuenstlerprogramm.de
Startgalerie im Museum auf Abruf: Peter Köllerer – Signs and Wonders
Reflective Idyll
The Startgalerie is currently showing photographic works by Peter Köllerer. A series of photographs, which remind of Jeff Wall’s C-prints, show forest idylls and messages engraved into tree trunks. The engraved words, however, are irritating - they have nothing in common with the usual “who loves who” or “xy was here”. Statements such as “have you heard of this gossip?” or “achieve your dreams” are carved in the trees. Only after reading the accompanying text does it become clear that these are the subject-lines of spam mails, and are therefore strangely familiar. In a pleasant and unobtrusive way they reflect that another kind of reality exists in our present world, which is not completely dominated by advertisement logic and communication strategies.
With its black and white slide shows the exhibition deals with the so-called “WildplakatiererInnen-Szene” in Vienna during the 70s (random attaching of posters all over the city). On the slides you can see posters with “no placards allowed” printed on them mounted on numerous walls and windows throughout town. The show questions the rights one has in a public space, the rights of freedom of speech, and it questions how much power a city municipality actually has.
The fact that these questions are asked in a show of the MUSA, a museum owned by the City of Vienna, is a good sign and demonstrates that, despite all, the democratic culture of this city is alive.
Startgalerie im Museum auf Abruf
1010 Vienna, Felderstrasse 6-8, next to the town hall, until 28. 08. 2008
www.musa.at
Stadtgalerie Schwaz: Jonas Burgert – Kopfschluss
At night in the studio
The Stadtgalerie Schwaz is currently showing an exclusive solo exhibit by the Berlin born artist Jonas Burgert titled “Kopfschluss”. The exhibit proves itself to be a kind of monumental-sensuous experience - Burgert usually paints his gloomy scenes on oversized canvases. It seems as if bizarre creatures had invaded his studio at night and played paintball with the most dazzling colours. In the style of grotesque history painting, Burgert creates places for protagonists as well as platforms for asynchronous incidents, for example an upper-class suite of roomes dominated by the chieftain of an ancient tribe. Instead of theory, the onlooker will find the theatricality of the unexpected and the unbalanced, visualised in the artist’s self-portraits.
Stadtgalerie Schwaz
6130 Schwaz, Palais Enzenberg, Franz-Josef-Strasse 27,
until 23. 08. 2008
www.galeriestadtschwaz.at
Galerie im Taxispalais: Geta Bratescu, Ana Lupas
From the treasure chest of the 70s
The Taxispalais is showing discoveries from the conceptual treasure chest of the 70s by exhibiting works created by the two Romanian artists Geta Bratescu and Ana Lupas, born 1926 and 1940 respectively.
Wooden strips bandaged to a crooked pair, a drapery of felt, and two table lamps – art-crutches on stage. When Geta Bratescu was a child, her hometown was bombed, and her school was transformed into a base hospital. Her installation “No to Violence”, created in 1974, was reconstructed for this exhibit. The Romanian avant-garde had to interact in a small intellectual circle. Performances developed in a studio or outside. What remained are photos and videos. Two hands, talking to one another – seen by the artists as a “second portrait” in the video “Hands” (1977). In a photo series from 1975 Bratescu pulls one transparent plastic bag after another over her head, until her portrait disappears into nothing. She saw this as the essence of a body in space respectively its decomposition.
Ana Lupas preserved the leftovers of an action, which began in 1964 and lasted for 10 years, as pewter monuments. The then 24-year old asked farmers to bind corn-ears in the form of minimalist sculptures. She covered the entire wall of the gallery’s main hall with a photo series documenting this action and juxtaposing it to the pewter relicts. The photo projection of a performance dating from 1970 is also remarkable: 100 village residents hang wet white bed sheets onto endless clotheslines – “Humid Installation”. 30 years later Lupas reconstructs the sheets out of paper and lets them bleed white with red paint. Relicts of archaic weddings, which claim the bloodstain as a proof of virginity? For the artist it is simply a symbol for the end of conceptual art.
Galerie im Taxispalais
6020 Innsbruck, Maraia-Theresien-Strasse 45, until 24. 08.08
www.galerieimtaxispalais.at
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
 |
|
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
