translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
070311: Krinzinger Projekte Razvan Botis – Trying to purchase what I once wanted to forget
Krinzinger Projekte
Razvan Botis – Trying to purchase what I once wanted to forget
15.01.11 – 26.03.11
Odd dough
There are two types of distress one can encounter when involved with consumption: an empty wallet or a forgotten PIN code. Someone who is broke or has lost access to his/her money is excluded from the warm and happy feeling of being able to buy something.
The writing on the wall of the exhibition of the young Romanian artist Razvan Botis reads: „The warmer, the cosier“, which sounds more like a promise that reproduction rates could increase this summer. Or one could conclude that the City of Vienna is funding the heating costs to ensure social stability. The coal particles, with which the writing on the wall was carried out, were carefully blurred beyond the outlines of the letters, as if they were caressed into the white of the wall, and this tenderness is possibly characteristic to all works displayed. The eponymous photograph shows a crude glove on a card reader. The empty hull arches protectively and inept over the blue plastic – the encounter of the neutral paying station with the lost, singular protective cover of a now freezing hand discloses an odd moment between anonymous embarrassment and personalized diligence. The other work, in which money drastically claims its right, despite its absence, shows three wallets on a crude wooden panel on two supports. The purses are new, empty and therefore flat, until they open and close like a clam – this piece is called “Breathing lessons”. A stranded fish could never be as amusing and at the same time look as endearing and silly.
Two works with swords appear more cryptic; one, near the ground on a white base is called “Don’t trust the colours”. Sample leather stripes in various colours have been spiked in an elegant way: an analogy with shish kebab sticks would be nasty, and the question who should have mistrusted whom, but who was committed and involved, still needs to be interpreted. The other sword, mounted solitarily and horizontally on the wall, fits perfectly into the wide end of a tie, as if it were a custom-made sheath. Rarely was scepticism against virile commotion presented in a more succinct manner.
None of the pieces refers to a dogma or claims any politically correct gestures of concern. They all share an astonished form of touching and questioning – of those things we know, of those which might hassle us, of those which we might prefer not to notice and those which we know through Razvan Boti’s arrangement, suddenly releases cheerful irony. The exhibition has been prolonged until March 26 and a catalogue documentation is currently in progress.
By Gesche Heumann
Krinzinger Projekte
1070 Vienna, Schottenfeldgasse 45
Tel: +43 1 512 81 42
Email: krinzingerprojekte@gmx.at
http://www.galerie-galerie.at/projekte/
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
070311
Krinzinger Schottenfeld
1070 Wien, Schottenfeldgasse 45
Tel: +43 1 512 81 42
Email: schottenfeld@galerie-krinzinger.at
https://www.galerie-krinzinger.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr 12-18, Sa 11-14 h
Krinzinger Schottenfeld
1070 Wien, Schottenfeldgasse 45
Tel: +43 1 512 81 42
Email: schottenfeld@galerie-krinzinger.at
https://www.galerie-krinzinger.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr 12-18, Sa 11-14 h