translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
260410: Galerie Krobath Gerold Miller
Galerie Krobath
Gerold Miller
24.03.10 – 30.04.10
A frame, please!?
What comes to one’s mind if one views art in isolation from any art historical and theoretical context? Can one consume art in a “conscious associative practice”; respectively is a description, a literary, psychologically anchored stream of consciousness, as coined by Samuel Beckett or Jack Kerouac, applicable for art objects without estranging the intended meaning?
In case individual associations are permitted, a clearly connoted outcome for Gerold Miller’s works cannot be guaranteed - clear in the sense of a content-related contrast between artworks and utility and design objects. What immediately comes to one’s mind are formal analogies to the 1970’s, high-tech IKEA-design or avant-garde design for hatchways, toilet seats? or iPad covers.
But to what or to whom do the works refer? An exhibit shown at the London-based Rocket Gallery was titled “What do you represent?” An insinuation to a cartoon by Ad Reinhardt, which shows a viewer pointing to a painting and commenting: Ha, ha, what does this represent? The picture’s answer being: What do you represent?
A similar line of argument is also apparent in Miller’s works. The minimalistic aluminium and copper wall applications glazed with car paint leaving an empty space in the middle. They refer to the frame-problem in modernistic tradition, something Malevich, Robert Ryman, or Joe Baer already dealt with. Not the painting, but the emancipated frame and the liberated wall come into play. If figurative painting focuses on external painting and abstract painting focuses on internal procedures, this form concentrates on constructing a spatial system of reference. The works, arranged in different work groups, are called “total objects”. The emptiness of the picture is what transforms the viewer, not the picture, into a reference system. As the artist describes it: Ultimately these works are cogitation objects, imaginations that took shape, layouts of a mental picture, fostered by the aesthetics of fashion, design, art and the arbitrary effect of any visual media.
Even if this form of minimal art did not propel my chain of associations into wild imaginary elevations, I can stick to my “conscious associative practice” and ask: what do you represent?
By Paul Gründorfer
Galerie Krobath
1010 Vienna, Eschenbachgasse 9
Tel: + 43 1 585 74 70
Fax: +43 1 585 74 72
email: office@galeriekrobarth.at
http://www.galeriekrobarth.at
Opening hours: Tue – Fri 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Sat 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.
260410
Galerie Krobath
1010 Wien, Eschenbachgasse 9
Tel: +43 1 585 74 70, Fax: +43 1 585 74 72
Email: office@galeriekrobath.at
http://www.galeriekrobath.at/
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr: 11-18h
Sa: 11-15h
Galerie Krobath
1010 Wien, Eschenbachgasse 9
Tel: +43 1 585 74 70, Fax: +43 1 585 74 72
Email: office@galeriekrobath.at
http://www.galeriekrobath.at/
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr: 11-18h
Sa: 11-15h