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081110: Generali Foundation Ana Torfs – Album / Tracks B
Generali Foundation
Ana Torfs – Album / Tracks B
03.09.2010 – 12.12.2010
In the burning glass of a flower
The story seems extremely confusing – and everyone has their own view: Ana Torfs lets actors recite the court files of the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in a slide-video installation at the Generali Foundation; a silent, but obviously attentive audience in a dissecting room listens to the faltering monologs.
Elsewhere Torfs interweaves quotes from the inquisition protocols against Jeanne d’Arc with photos of a distressed, weeping, and tired woman, a fictitious contemporary saint. Slide installations are the artists preferred media, as it sets the time span of reception to its audience.
Not so the series of wall charts that Torfs uses to present the detailed research results of Carl von Linné's system of classifying and naming plants, thereby also demonstrating his colonialist background. Like a burning glass, a simple botanic description focuses on history and societies – similar to the photo series with the ambiguous title “Legend”, allowing an uninhibited telescopic view onto idyllic landscapes of the Canary Islands and simultaneously listing data and facts of the western desire for the exotic, the other; and, on the other hand, for contemporary migration and exodus.
Torfs’ primary topic – the impossibility to formulate final realities - articulates itself in a reliable and modest form; only the photo series “à…à…aaah!”, which loosely refers to its artistic genesis and in which harlequins and musicians encounter each other, is penetrated by fine humour. But despite all sobriety, Ana Torfs’ works are anything but solemn: their formal design is absolutely sober - one could say as dry as a bone – and they run no danger of appearing weighty or portentous.
By Nina Schedlmayer
Generali Foundation
1040 Vienna, Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15
Tel: +43 1 504 98 80
Fax: +43 1 504 98 83
http://foundation.gnerali.at
Opening hours: Tue – Fri 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Thu 11 a.m. – 8 p.m., Sat and Sun 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.
081110
Generali Foundation
1040 Wien, Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15
Tel: +43 1 504 98 80, Fax: +43 1 504 98 83
Email:
http://foundation.generali.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr 11-18, Do 11-20, Sa, So 11-16h
Generali Foundation
1040 Wien, Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15
Tel: +43 1 504 98 80, Fax: +43 1 504 98 83
Email:
http://foundation.generali.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr 11-18, Do 11-20, Sa, So 11-16h
