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180411: Galerie Hubert Winter Mary Ellen Carroll – Proposals, Encryptions and the Death of a Typology (Architecturally Speaking
Galerie Hubert Winter
Mary Ellen Carroll – Proposals, Encryptions and the Death of a Typology (Architecturally Speaking
11.03.11 – 07.05.11
A question of the perspective
Works by the American concept and performance artist Mary Ellen Carroll are currently being presented at the Galerie Hubert Winter. This is the fifth presentation of her work in Vienna. Winter is showing her earlier pieces whose differing intellectual levels flow into real aesthetic products - in contrast to later works such as “Nothing” (2007), in which Carroll only informs of an artistic action via a written report.
Five monogrammed American wool naval blankets hang in the gallery’s main room. Black Bauhaus-style letters cover the beige background as if they were written with an oversized typewriter. At first glance it appears to be an English text, but upon closer view it's a phonetic transcription according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The text is Jonathan Swift’s angry satire “A Modest Proposal” (1729), in which Swift, due to the unbelievable famine in Ireland at that time, suggests to sell infants to be cannibalized by the rich. Swift even goes so far as to calculate the economic advantage and offers suggestions on how to prepare the dishes. Of course all of this misery is ascribed to the suppression by the English and even includes the beginnings of criticism of capitalism. Upon reading the entire text the feeling of bad taste and perversion prevails. The actual quality of Carroll’s work lies in its timelessness. Carroll fabricated these “written carpets” for the first time in 1990/91 and created a permanent element. She presented these works at the Gallery Winter in 1997 and again in 2011, they leave a broad scope for interpretation of political measures.
The loveliest work at this exhibition is the “act of god” which engages Mies Van der Rohe’s famous “Glass house” in Illinois. It depicts five grey lithographic stones with photographs of a river in a monochrome blue. This is the view from the Glass House to the Fox River, which also defines the building’s character. Mies Van der Rohe attempted to design an airy house enabling its residents to live as barrier-free as possible with the landscape. How problematic this aspiration was and how his client, Edith Farnsworth, did not always appreciate it becomes clear in Farnsworth’s memoirs. Carroll superimposed the text in chapter 13 of these memoirs - in which the conflict with Van der Rohe is described - in the form of a binary code over the photos and incorporated the result in the lithographic stones. It is remarkable that Carroll not only hides the view of the famous house from us, but also provides us with the private appraisement, even if coded, of its commissioner.
The extent, to which Mary Ellen Carroll is interested in architecture as a social element and how important changing intellectual viewpoints are to her, becomes clear in her rotating house project. One can watch the 180 degree rotation of the house on www.prototype180.com. The abstracted black-and-white drawings of these rotations, dating back to 1992, are displayed at the gallery. With her cubes and black lines she created a beautiful concentration of conceptual aesthetics.
By Susanne Rohringer
Galerie Hubert Winter
1070 Vienna, Breite Gasse 17
Tel: +43 1 524 09 76
Fax: +43 1 524 09 76 – 9
email: office@galeriewinter.at
http://www.galeriewinter.at
Opening hours: Tue – Fri 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Sat 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
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180411
Galerie Hubert Winter
1070 Wien, Breite Gasse 17
Tel: +43 1 524 09 76, Fax: +43 1 524 09 76 9
Email: office@galeriewinter.at
http://www.galeriewinter.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr: 11-18h
Sa 11-14h
Galerie Hubert Winter
1070 Wien, Breite Gasse 17
Tel: +43 1 524 09 76, Fax: +43 1 524 09 76 9
Email: office@galeriewinter.at
http://www.galeriewinter.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr: 11-18h
Sa 11-14h
