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190410: Christian Rupp – “Schafsnaturen”
ÖBV
Christian Rupp – “Schafsnaturen”
20.01.10 - 07.05.10
At the beginning there was a logo….
Christian Rupp presents two series at the ÖBV exhibition, both of which could not be more different: “Schafsnaturen”(hanger-on) and “Invasion”.
“Schafsnaturen” consists of colourful patterns comprised of artfully assembled brand logos set off against a white background. The computer prints mounted on jagged Sheetrock resemble wallpaper, torn off a wall. The colourful rosettes, positioned in rows or scattered separately and criss-cross contoured shimmering chains seem to have taken over the organic microstructures of brand-logos stored in brain cells. A consequence of the “mental environmental pollution”, as the artist describes it.
He wrote advertising messages onto wallpaper with his Logo-Alphabet, designed in 2002, to unmask them as consumer-religion dogmas. Landscape paintings made of brand names, including brand animals and flowers round out Rupp’s world of brands. “Divine nature” competes with an artificial hyper world of mass products, whose producers consequently turn into deities.
The central piece of the exhibition is a backlit, pointed arch church window. Comparable with the depiction of a bible story on a medieval high altar, Rupp, with the help of the iconography of the brand names, narrates the contemporary version of the predominant “dogma”: the central figure, a fast-food-clown, holds, Neptune-like, the trident of one of the most desired Italian sport cars. The auto mobility attests to the materially (safe) guarded existence in a sea of consumer goods. The “Deus in machina” replaces spirit with spirits. Over a heap of shells and a six-legged petrol station dog, hangs a cumulative collection of Bibendi.
On the right side: a landscape of pleasure – a kind of “contra mountain” (Paramount-logo) with the flame of a lighter and chocolate dragons encircled by goose-stepping uniformed troops (Scotch whiskey-like). Breezing above them: the 4-radial stars of a TV-set manufacturer. Above this mundane scene, at the level of the golden ratio, the band of fitness, comprised of blue-white stripped torn tracksuit pants, forms the dividing line to the afterworld: heaven is decorated with a double rosette from the contemporary symbol for the goddess of victory as a sports accessories-model. Rupp creates nectar and ambrosia emblems with the M’s belonging to a clown and the C of a brewery. Mandalas made of crystal shaped automobile logos symbolize utmost mobility.
Christian Rupp employs the logos in the sense of an extended meaning – in the sense of the Greek word “logos”. By creating images with these “word-images”, which reflect their mental abilities, he succeeds in visualizing the “entire sense of reality”.
In the second part of the exhibition: “Invasion”, the artists also takes us to Greece, to illustrate the downside of this mobility within the market conform reality-illusion machine. He named the black-and-white photographs of mass product plastic chairs “soldier-portraits” and their signs of wear documents their individuality. A 180-degree panorama photomontage depicting a beach shows a battalion of the same chairs emerging from the sea, marching towards land, where the others are already waiting in rank and file – for the tourist invasion. Simple dreariness, outside of the vacation-paradise-bustle – surreal real. Throwaway objects now occupy the country, once inundated by anthropomorphic goddess statues.
With the plastic chair he creates an icon of the “modern human”, as a subject subordinated to the character of goods, whose mortality is characterized by garbage and their divinity is characterized by their non-degradability. The logical short circuit of both exhibition parts clearly shows the exchangeability of the presumptions: the way Rupp depicts the actually tangible (fortune) and intangible (mortality) of existence and vice versa – conveys the character of a ‘pure world of ideas’ through the materialistic part of the consumer world with abstract logo-patterns, and points to how the ubiquitous inescapable icons of desire draw the transcendent into immanence. The afterworld of the highest satisfaction begins immediately behind the next shop window, while this life succumbs to tourist-conform requirements – since fashion revivals replaced the wheel of eternal recurrence. “Principle of world rationality?” – “Logo!” (German for: of course)!
By Renate Quehenberger
ÖBV
1010 Vienna, Grillparzerstrasse 14
Tel: +43 1 40 120 – 0
http://www.oebv.com
Opening hours: Mon – Fri: 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
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190410
ÖBV
1010 Wien, Grillparzerstraße 14
Tel: +43 1 40 120-0
http://www.oebv.com
Öffnungszeiten: Mo-Fr 8-16 Uhr
ÖBV
1010 Wien, Grillparzerstraße 14
Tel: +43 1 40 120-0
http://www.oebv.com
Öffnungszeiten: Mo-Fr 8-16 Uhr
