Teilen
English summaries August 1 - 30
Salzburger Kunstervein, Künstlerhaus
Agnieszka Polska – Pseudoword Hazards
18.07.2013 – 15.09.2013
By Susanne Rohringer
Agnieszka Polska, born 1985 in Lublin and who lives in Krakow after completing her art studies in Berlin, focuses on questions dealing with collective consciousness and its unconscious and conscious oblivion. She also asks how much knowledge remains after oblivion that can surface in a society, and how it can be raised and newly evaluated. Polska deals with these questions using examples of Polish avant-garde of the 50s and 60s.
The artist mainly works with materials, such as newspaper clippings, photos and archive films, which she mounts into three to six-minute videos. In slow flowing speed with gridded points we see studio interiors, plaster heads, brushes, and many other objects. It's a kind of collaged film technique, predominantly presented in shades of grey. A certain meditative monotony and uniformity sets in. Simultaneously the videos are shown with explanatory English texts. In “How the Work is Done” (2011) she questions a strike in 1956 by students of the sculptor and ceramics course in the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. The students criticised the work conditions and the political standardisation of their studies and occupied their class for days. Polska replicated the scenes by filming mannequins made of cloth and shows us the ambience of the studio. To the viewer, the strike remains secondary. Can experiences, conditions of this type, be made apparent with this form of presentation? A video from 2009 centers on an article by Sigmund Freud: Psychopathology of everyday life – on forgetting, promising, assaulting, superstition and mistake”. In this video, photos of Minimal Art and Concept Art happenings and performances in the 50s and 60s are filmed with the Freudian text as the commentary. The three-minute films end in an absurd succession of objects, without any context.
More convincing are Polska’s photo works. One of the three works shown in the side hall of the main room is “Levitation Egg” (2011). The work depicts an egg floating over a wooden baton. The picture consists of various collaged photographic layers and makes believe it is a significant sculpture. It’s all about being a highly artificial egg and hybrid piece of art, which never existed in this way. Here an absurd and surreal humour emerges, more of which would be good for Polska’s work. And taking issues on beyond Polish art history would have also been desirable.
Salzburger Kunstverein, Künstlerhaus
5020 Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstrasse 3
Tel: +43 (0) 662/84 22 94-0
Fax: +43 (0) 662/84 07 62
email: office@salzburger-kunstverein.at
www.salzburger-kunstverein.at
Opening times: Tue - Sun 12-19 hours
Museum Tinguely
Zilvinas Kempinas
05.06.2013 – 22.09.2013
By Sonja Gasser
Squeaking, clattering and metallic sounding beats clearly testify that Jean Tinguely’s (1925 – 1991) large machines are in motion. In the midst, hardly noticeable, two pillars by Zilvinas Kempinas (1969) rise. From within, between fluttering magnetic bands, a blazing light emitted by fluorescent lamps glimmers towards the outside. The works by the Lithuanian artist, who lives in New York, are minimalistic - created by using only a few and simple materials.
As if held by a magic hand, magnetic bands float over the floor and are driven by ventilators mounted on the ceiling. Or delicate bands, stretched lamellar across the room, seem to lower the ceiling of the exhibition room and appear to become lighter with increasing distance until they dissolve.
The works by the artist, who took part in the Venice Biennale in 2009, convince and surprise with their elegance as well as the ability to fill the room with such little volume. Tinguely’s works, in contrast, have a completely different effect – in comparison he worked rather crudely. The nerd and inventor was not interested in meticulous perfection. He created unusual machines without any apparent use, employing worn out metal pieces from the scrapyard and thereby stirring up art history. Touching or pressing a button is expressively permitted. Set into motion in this way, his constructions fascinate to this day.
If Jean Tinguely, the “enfant terrible” of art and his works appear clumsy and heavy, then Zilvinas Kempinas, whose works are dainty and light, is the paragon of aesthetic precision. The reduction in the use of materials also results the predominance of black and white. At times, the site-specific works contrast with the background of their environment, thereby accentuating the color of the wooden floor or the view of the Rhine River. The artist successfully integrated autonomous works into the existing presentation of the Tinguely collection. He thereby sets new accents and offers new views of Tinguely’s works through additional references. There is a connection between the two due to a certain extent of experimental lust as well as the fascination in transforming a work through motion. Nevertheless, both represent an independent position – thereby the connection between a monographic permanent exhibition and the presentation of works by an artist of a later generation - in the form of an exhibition within an exhibition is successful.
Museum Tinguely
4002 Basel, Paul Sacher-Anlage 2
Tel: +41 (0)61 681 93 20
Fax: +41 (0)61 681 93 21
email: infos@tinguely.ch
www.tinguely.ch
Opening times: Tue - Sun 11–19 hours
Kunsthalle Krems
Elfie Semotan - Contact
14.07.2013 to 06.10.2013
By Nina Schedlmayer
Helmut Lang, Cordula Reyer, straight clothes, distinctive faces: the Viennese fashion world in the 1990's was really cool. Its image significantly influenced the photographer Elfie Semotan, who already had several exhibitions in museums and galleries – not without reason.
In the large show at the Kunsthalle Krems, she now presents - for the most part never shown before – works which were mostly created in addition to the commissioned works for the fashion and advertising industries. In an elegiac series about the Hungarian puszta, supermodel Reyer appears beside gnarled old people. In another row, Semotan satirizes all too clichéd, perceptions of a typical secretary.
Now and then, however, the chosen works exhibit their art aspirations really forcefully – and remind one sometimes of those other artists who articulate similar thematics far more interestingly.
The inspired stagings of young beauties remind one of artists, who articulated thematically similar works in a more interesting way. Beauties inspired by art history remind of Bettina Rheims, Cindy Sherman, Franz West or Christian Ludwig Attersee.
It's stressed here all too often how very much Semotan broke the rules of the genre The best works in the show are those to which the "But I am art" tag isn't attached: the portrait of Louise Bourgois as a giggling old lady between her bright pink sculptures, Franz Graf in his slightly chaotic-looking house; Maria Lassnig, who is waltzing around in a damnably stylistic dress. That's really unbeatable.
Kunsthalle Krems
3500 Krems, Franz-Zeller-Platz
Tel: +43-2732 90 80 10
Fax: +43-2732 90 80 11
E-mail: office@kunstalle.at
www.kunsthalle.at
Opening times: daily 10-18 hours
OÖ Kulturquartier
Höhenrausch 3
14.06.2013 – 13.10.2013
By Hannah Winkelbauer
Ever since its initiation in 2009, when Linz was the European Culture Capital, the “Höhenrausch” program of the Linz O.K. (Offenes Kulturhaus) attracted people from all over Upper Austria and the provinces. Everyone is fascinated by the art works and the view. From tower to tower, those who have no fear of heights, wander on the roof of the O.K.: one can enjoy the view from the 30-metre high wooden "Oberösterreich-Turm", the bamboo construction of the Taiwanese artist, Wen-Chih Wang, and the tower of the Ursulinenkirche.
The ascent of the “Höhenrausch” towers is an ascent through art. The staircases lead through the "Biennale Cuvée" exhibition in which the O.K. presents art works. For OK director, Martin Sturm, biennials are the most important form of contemporary art exhibitions. Sturm particularly values their experimental propensity. In the O.K. more than 20 works by international artists are presented, which were previously shown at biennials in Berlin, Busan, Genk, Havana, Istanbul, Liverpool, Montevideo, Paris, São Paulo or Venice.
Amongst others, the work "Alter Gogo” (2010) by the Nigerian photographer, Andrew Esiebo, is shown. In this series of portraits of South African grandmothers who belong to a football club, the artist juxtaposes a photo of each woman in her football outfit with that of her daily role of grandmother with grandchildren.
On the first floor of the O.K. the Spaniard, Jota Izquierdo, focuses his work "Capitalismo Amarillo: Special Economic Zone” (2011/12) on the counterfeiting of proprietary goods in China and their marketing by street traders in Spain and Mexico. His installation – a collection of partly absurd emulations of proprietary watches or luxury handbags – is amusing and, at the same time, scary. Apart from the objects, videos are also shown which document the path of the counterfeited products.
The giant ant sculptures by Rafael Gomezbarros accompany the visitor all along the way. The creatures, which belong to the work "Casa Tomada – Occupied House”, have even made it up to the steeple of the Ursulinenkirche.
The “Höhenrausch” in Linz is unique with its combination of a parcours on the city roofs and contemporary art. From the roof of the O.K., the capital of the Province of Upper Austria looks like the adorable replicas of Linz in the famous grotto railway in the Pöstlingberg.
The numerous visitors who climb the stairs, make the "Oberösterreich-Turm" - whose highest point is on a level with the peak of the steeple of the Ursulinenkirche – rock gently but hardly noticeably. When the clouds gather in the heavens and it begins to rain, the visitors stand under the tower's wooden awning and have an impressive panoramic view of the rain-swept hills of the nearby Mühlviertel.
OÖ Kulturquartier
4020 Linz, OK Platz 1
Tel: +43 732 784178-0
E-mail: info@ooekulturquartier.at
ooekulturquartier.at
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
 |
|
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
