translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
060910: Galerie Eugen Lendl – Palais Lengheimb Christian KRI Kammerhofer – defeKT
Galerie Eugen Lendl – Palais Lengheimb
Christian KRI Kammerhofer – defeKT
11.08.10 – 11.09.10
High heels at the domestic shrine
The most defiant work in Christian KRI Kammerhofer’s exhibition is displayed in the first room of the Galerie Lendl: a cigarette in an ashtray placed under a glass cube. The work is titled “Smoking Area”; how long will it take until smoking areas will be reduced to a few cubic centimetres? In a time, in which the ubiquitous health-hazard smoking is part of heated political debates it is not far-fetched to create polemic art works dealing with the topic.
The artist, born 1971, takes up topics that have been dealt with by magazines as well as non-fiction books for years if not decades: shoe fetish (with high-heels assemblages in a domestic shrine) as well as hectic everyday life (with manipulated clocks – and one, with its hands tied down with locks).
In the installation “Tears” things become even simpler: water drips out of two plastic bottles onto a table; the liquid is then passed on into a container standing beneath it. The bottles as a male - and the table as a female element? The installation couldn’t be more antiquated.
Yet one should not underestimate Kammerhofer: his better works reflect sculpture in a humorous way. In one of his videos (to be seen on youtube) he wraps a
chair in tin foil, positions its ephemeral replica into a corner and tries to sit on it. Or he lets his initials - written in butter - melt in a pan and shows the process in rewind mode. He might not have reinvented the wheel, but his works can definitely be conceived as a serious way of dealing with matter and space.
By Nina Schedlmayer
Galerie Eugen Lendl – Palais Lengheimb
8010 Graz, Bürgergasse 4/1
Tel.: +43 316 825 514
Fax.: +43 316 816 576 – 4
email: eugen.lendl@sime.com
http://www.eugenlendl.com
Opening hours: Tue-Fri 11 a.m. – 7 p.m., Sat 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.
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