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200409: Kunsthalle Wien: Elevator to the scaffold – Banks Violette & Miles Davis, Dashiell Hammett, John Huston, Weegee
Kunsthalle Wien: Elevator to the scaffold – Banks Violette & Miles Davis, Dashiell Hammett, John Huston, Weegee
At the scene of crime
A list of participants of an exhibition mainly consisting of names not attributed to fine arts makes one curious about what’s coming up. The Kunsthalle, now presenting “Elevator to the scaffold – Banks Violette & Miles Davis, Dashiell Hammett, John Huston, Weegee”, has successfully done this once before: with the Bruce Naumann/Samuel Beckett exhibition.
The topic setting is inspiring: scenes of crime, an attitude of refusal towards any morale. The curators Banks Violette and Gerald Matt, director of the Kunsthalle, attempt to pursue the gray area between lying and truth. Violette positions a burning drum set on the podium and combines it with a mirrored wall, which is destroyed by monstrous apparatus step by step during the exhibition. Violette’s heavy-metal fire resembles a scene of violent action – however, the action is already a thing of the past. A fact that is shared with film clippings of John Huston’s “Maltese Falcon”, in which Humphrey Bogart trudged through houses that were about to be torn down, and the reconstruction of the fascinating crime scenes by Weegee: with plywood boards attracting attention with blatant messages such as “murder”, “more murder”, “tragedy”, or “odds and ends”. Here the act is also a thing of the past, the corpses are in the gutter, and police take care of the official dealings.
As so often, the inadequacy of the medium does the exhibition no good: the first edition of Hammett’s novel is presented under a glass cover – leaving no insight at all. Miles Davis’ music is heard from an extra room – an obvious compromise. And John Huston’s “Maltese Falcon” is shown on computer terminals – rather trashy. Similar to the exhibition currently presented one floor lower (“The Porn Identity”) one tends to wonder why, at times, art so rarely relies on itself.
By Nina Schedlmayer
Kunsthalle Wien
1070 Vienna, Museumsplatz 1, until 03.05.09
www.kunsthallewien.at
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
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200409
Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier
1070 Wien, Museumsplatz 1
Tel: +43 1 521 89-0
Email: office@kunsthallewien.at
http://www.kunsthallewien.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-So 10-19, Do 11-21 h
Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier
1070 Wien, Museumsplatz 1
Tel: +43 1 521 89-0
Email: office@kunsthallewien.at
http://www.kunsthallewien.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-So 10-19, Do 11-21 h
