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281013: Kunsthalle Krems: Yoko Ono. HALF-A-WIND SHOW
Kunsthalle Krems
Yoko Ono. HALF-A-WIND SHOW
20.10.2013 – 23.02.2014
Video Heaven over Fluxus Rock
By Roland Schöny
It was high time to show the epochal Œuvre of Yoko Ono as a pioneer of Fluxus and performative, conceptual art right from its beginning. Since »Y E S Yoko Ono« a decade and a half ago, there has hardly been a retrospective of similar dimension such as this, prepared by the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt's co-operation project now shown in Krems.
Poetic aspects transport Yoko Ono's sky works. In these earliest video works in the history of art, in »Sky Machine« (1961) or »Sky TV« (1966) – shown in Krems in technically renewed form – cloud formations play the main role in pictures of the sky which are broadcast on a TV screen. Not only subjective dreams and experiment led there. Also the involvement with Yves Klein who had already signed the Mediterranean sky with a gesture in 1946 on the beach in Nice. Also visible through the glass wall of the entry corridor in the entry setting: a variation of the »Morning Beams« in the large hall. Inside: a documentary photograph of »LIGHTING PIECE« (1955) - Yoko Ono sitting at a piano without pressing a single key. Instead, she let a match burn down. That was (non-)action, dramaturgy, subversive performance.
»Painting To Be Stepped On« (1961 / 2013) continues the idea of the performative in another way – as an invitation to the public to come inside the art work, whilst »Painting To Hammer A Nail« (1961/1966) is reminiscent of Günther Uecker. The content-related centre piece follows - that paradigmatic change of picture and text to performance and participation unfurled through that work which Yoko Ono showed in 1965 in the New York art gallery of Fluxus founder, George Maciunas: short, partly fantastic and partly easily comprehensible directives written in black ink on paper. Yoko Ono later continued this idea as »Paintings To Be Constructed In Your Head« (1995) and as interventions »en miniature« written directly onto the walls of the Kunsthalle. However, it's significant that the work is complete for the first time through the involvement of the public. In this combination of writing, text, instruction, score, notation, action and participation, the formal revolutionary and the socio-political awakening is substantiated.
How early Yoko Ono crossed genre limits, especially the allocated cultural and social context demarcation lines for women, is shown in the video »Cut Piece«, a performance which she already premiered in 1965 in the Sôgetsu Art Center in Tokio and later in Carnegie Hall in New York: on the stage, a young woman is literally having the clothes stripped off her. Thematising violence with smouldering feelings of panic.
Beautifully presented, the dissected room »Half-A-Room« from the late 1960's. Somewhat lost, on the other hand, »Balance Piece« (1997/2010). And if you've seen the film »Fly« (1970) in Vienna's Gartenbau cinema with a fly on a naked woman's body, the projection here will certainly seem tiny. The exhibition seems distinctly cooler, however, where the story with John Lennon begins. Naturally, appearances such as the »Bed-in for Peace« in the Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam (1969) are included, but the problems that always accompanied Yoko Ono's reception seem to appear here: only appreciated as an artist by insiders, her work remained hidden for many years through her marriage with John Lennon, his murder, as well as also all possible rumours about the split-up of the Beatles.
Altogether, a comprehensive and well-rounded project that throws superb light on this constantly active, exceptional artist in the avant-garde context of the twentieth century.
Kunsthalle Krems
3500 Krems, Franz-Zeller Platz 3
www.kunsthalle.at
Tel: +43 (0)2732/908010
Opening hours: Daily 10.00 - 18.00 hours
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
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281013
Kunsthalle Krems
3500 Krems, Franz-Zeller-Platz 3
Tel: +43-2732 90 80 10, Fax: +43-2732 90 80 11
Email: office@kunstalle.at
http://www.kunsthalle.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di - So und Mo wenn Feiertag 10-18 Uhr; in den Wintermonaten 10-17 Uh
Kunsthalle Krems
3500 Krems, Franz-Zeller-Platz 3
Tel: +43-2732 90 80 10, Fax: +43-2732 90 80 11
Email: office@kunstalle.at
http://www.kunsthalle.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di - So und Mo wenn Feiertag 10-18 Uhr; in den Wintermonaten 10-17 Uh
