translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
250709: Salzburger Kunstverein, Künstlerhaus: Pawel Ksiazek
Salzburger Kunstverein, Künstlerhaus: Pawel Ksiazek
Internet mannerisms
Admittedly: The idea to download pictures from the “net” is not really new. With the aim to use them as patterns for a general kind of artistic access, and anonymously. Inspired by the bonus of the largest supply of pictures of all time and all worlds, as generally phrased. Just as easily accessible as permissive, even if the access is sometimes restricted, old aunty Internet.
Who has to bustle on the borders and fringes of human existence. And who then unexpectedly, and increasingly, attain an unimagined popularity. Buzzword: coma boozing. High in alcohol content and – Absolut! – pits. On a kind of senior trip, recurring every weekend, destination: Nirvana. When the party will have irrevocably ended.
But all this can be well worth seeing in the works by Polish painter Pawel Ksiazek. His works shown at the Salzburger Kunstverein (and during the so-called Festival-time) include the most lurid headlines about the nocturnal fright before and the horror on the morning after, in a panorama of abysmal panel paintings. “N.N. vs Artists” presents the maltreated young amidst their own disgraced objects. In the digitalized dilemma of filth and neglect: the trophies of a victorious past, almost buried under the rubble of addiction and booze. Or a snapshot during a comatose snooze, with a champagne bottle still in mouth … uncontrolled. Uninhibited. Weak-willed. Babylon of the texted shots of the omnipresent and omnipotent cell phone.
Controversial? Shocking? Yes and no. Because: it’s all sealed in the dusty topics and techniques of the workshops of seemingly old masterly small masters. Almost grandfatherly. Where, much too quickly, relational closeness to relatives is dug up in art history, and can be found there.
The Internet – inexhaustible shelter of a completely hyped-up mannerism and its figurines contorted beyond all recognition, of a revolving and turning (away) body? In the critical attitudes towards society represented by Viennese Actionism – or the current tendency towards the performative (example: Abu Ghraib).
Even laying the track of the eruptive expressive seems to originate from the stocks of a calculated / digitalized gesture of the colour toner than something which has become notoriously “authentic.”
But: they are not as incredibly faceless, as sex, violence and a good mood attempt to convey by their globalized dissemination. Even the anonymous has a name. His name. Something one had to find out under different circumstances, in a rather painful experience in relatively luckless introductory conversations….
By Stephan Maier
Salzburger Kunstverein, Künstlerhaus
5020 Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstrasse 3, until 13.09.09
www.salzburger-kunstverein.at
250709
Salzburger Kunstverein
5020 Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstrasse 3
Tel: +43 (0) 662/84 22 94-0, Fax: +43 (0) 662/84 07 62
Email: office@salzburger-kunstverein.at
http://www.salzburger-kunstverein.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-So 12-19h
Salzburger Kunstverein
5020 Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstrasse 3
Tel: +43 (0) 662/84 22 94-0, Fax: +43 (0) 662/84 07 62
Email: office@salzburger-kunstverein.at
http://www.salzburger-kunstverein.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-So 12-19h