300913: Gallery Meyer Kainer, Büro Weltausstellung: Heimo Zobernig

Galerie Meyer Kainer, Büro Weltausstellung Heimo Zobernig 04.09.2013 to 05.10.2013 The exertions of austerity By Margareta Sandhofer Heimo Zobernig has again presented us with a task. Up to now, he has always demanded mental agility in the reception of his works, but this time considerably more sharply. Zobernig is exhibiting a current series of paintings at Meyer Kainer, all 1 x 1 square metre, acrylic on canvas. The only familiar thing in this Zobernig exhibition is the title of the works "o.T." (= Untitled) everything else is, at least for the Viennese scene, amazing. Heimo Zobernig "normally" practices (practiced) conceptual displacements in painting, sculpture, installation, video and performance, which furnish the presented object and the presentation of the object with the same aspiration. The basis is the artwork, the staging of the artistic act; the exhibition is the stage is the artwork. Zobernig urges intellectual play with the conceptualization of sculpture, painting and architecture, which becomes spatially, figuratively and “notationally” manifest and is elusive. What has just announced itself in one example in the closed Zobernig solo exhibit in the Kunsthaus Graz is now present in a more developed stage in Vienna. The sovereignty of the exhibition room as a White Cube is not being intervened; colourful, diverse painted pictures are hung in conventional manner, suitable for the salon, as it were, virtually provocatively acceptable even for staid tastes. The hermetic, to date excessive, Zobernig nimbus is undermined, the admirers are bewildered. At least in the concurrent exhibition in Stefan Bidner's Büro Weltausstellung, the familiar Zobernig image remains intact. One entrance is barred with an untreated pressboard. It's the citation of an intervention already presented by Stefan Bidner in 1993 in Innsbruck. Zobernig has currently created the corresponding archival intention from Bidner's foundation in a 13-part edition: almost consistently monochrome quadratic pictures; white distemper is put on with a paint roller, colouring agents are unadorned, already used pressboards, relics of the first plinths defined as an art objects in Zobernig's oeuvre. The works are precisely arranged and clearly signed and dated. As incompatible as the two concurrent exhibitions may seem, they are two poles of painting, temporary stations of possible developments. References to art history phenomena occur in both. In Bidner' Büro Weltausstellung, it is strategic reflections on minimalistic and conceptual tendencies, such as those presented by Yves Klein, respectively Robert Barry or the Arte Povera. The Spartan aesthetic of the radical reduction opens up possibly an even more complex space for critical or ironic interpretation. Here, sober austerity is brittle elegance – there, the decorative picture with abstract narration. The bow is rather taut. But Zobernig succeeds in identifying himself with both symptoms with (ironic) ease and to represent them equally in a idiosyncratic, heterogeneous, solipsistic position – and appears to get great satisfaction out of newly revoking the classification in his/a scheme and in straining the judgement of the Viennese public. Galerie Meyer Kainer 1010 Vienna, Eschenbachgasse 9 Tel: +43 1 585 72 77 Fax: +43 1 585 75 39 E-mail: contact@meyerkainer.com http://www.meyerkainer.com Opening hours: Tue-Fri 11-18, Sat 11-15 hours Büro Weltausstellung 1020 Vienna, Praterstraße 42 / Stiege 1 / Mezzanin Tel: +43 6764302191 Fax: – E-mail: office@artfoundation.at http://www.artfoundation.at Opening hours: Mon-Fri 14-18 hours

Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville

300913

Galerie Meyer Kainer
1010 Wien, Eschenbachgasse 9
Tel: +43 1 585 72 77, Fax: + 43 1 585727788
Email: contact@meyerkainer.com
http://www.meyerkainer.com
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr 11-18, Sa 11-15h

Büro Weltausstellung
1020 Wien, Praterstraße 42 / Stiege 1 / Mezzanin
Tel: +43 6764302191, Fax: –
Email: office@artfoundation.at
http://www.artfoundation.at
Öffnungszeiten: Mo-Fr 14-18 h

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