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English summaries February 10 - 23
Galerie Lindner
Anna-Maria Bogner - Ratio
13.02.2014 to 21.03.2014
By Margareta Sandhofer
Anna–Maria Bogner is an astoundingly young artist in Peter Lindner's program. But she is also astoundingly young for the consequence with which she tows her artistic line.
Her sparse drawings in blacklead and pencil carry her unmistakeable signature. Anna–Maria Bogner doesn't create scant art for hasty enjoyment. She demands that the viewer beholds the depth of space which she constructs out of fine lines: clearly reduced, disciplined in the extreme, irritating in her minimal and subtle deviations from geometric or perspective fundamental forms.
In the middle of the drawings, she presents an installation; with the puristic application of a few eyelets in the wall and one on an expanded rubber band which fragments and entangles the room all at the same time. In November 2013, Anna–Maria Bogner aroused attention at the "Parallel" (an alternative to the VIENNAFAIR) with a wall installation with exactly the same applications. While the intervention at the "Parallel" was still tender, floating filigree in the room, this is architecturally anchored. An optically fundamental meaning can be seen in the metal junctions. The room's proportions are anchored. The gallery room is traversed, intersected and, at the same time, solidly interconnected. As if the installation were a constructive part of the room. The delicate, intangible limbo which evades the unending semblance of the earlier version, has given way to a self-confident certainty which dominates the room. The new rubber band installation is certainly the central exhibit, a magnet in the current exhibition.
In the adjoining room, the picture divided into two takes a second, particularly important position. Two large drawings stand back-to-front to one another. The slightly vertical displacement between the two creates a tense relationship between them. The drawings are clearly divided from one another by their frames, but appear to want to surmount these, they reach out towards each other, but the optical impression is that of a separation. As if the large unit to which they belong is arbitrarily split: the cohesiveness of the two parts is compulsory.
Anna–Maria Bogner's works are characterized by a contradictory principle. Space is suggested and deconstructed, the space experience is invoked and simultaneously withheld.
It's an ascetic art of concentrated precision, without pathos, without colour. The whiteness of the void stands for space itself whose continuum is brought to a halt by crystalline fractions which concretise themselves when single lines are drawn energetically through the non-transparent construction. Significant characteristics are an idiosyncratic, renaissance-like classic and asceticism secluded within themselves, occasionally meditative.
Galerie Lindner
1060 Vienna, Schmalzhofgasse 13/3
Tel: +43 1 913 44 58
Fax: +43 1 913 44 58
email: Galerie.Lindner@chello.at
www.galerie-lindner.at
Opening hours: Tue - Fri 14-18 hours
Galerie Martin Janda
Roman Ondák – Erased Wing Mirror
22.01.2014 – 08.03.2014
By Susanne Rohringer
In his third solo exhibition at the Gallery Martin Janda, the Slovak artist Roman Ondák shows alienated objects of his immediate surroundings.
Among others, he uses relicts from everyday socialism and underlines, or rather levels, their original meaning.
However, the artist not only deals with private and public life in former Slovakia, but he also confronts cultural and art historical questions, such as those regarding the meaning of a mirror and a base. One of his works – “side mirror” shows a white and grey stone shaped like a side mirror of a car in front of a relief-like map. It is the diverse cultural historic meaning of a mirror that Ondák is focussed on. His mirror is blind and allows no reflection. It refuses to provide any information.
With this work, Ondák questions if a look in the mirror reflects reality or only an excerpt of reality – or throws back a distorted image. The question if a mirror provides us with knowledge or only shows illusions has occupied people since antiquity.
Another topic of art history can be found in the lower floor of the gallery. A square shaped pedestal supports a round, coin-like layer. After taking a closer look it turns out to be a keyhole pointing into the inner of the base. Thereby, in a humorous way, Ondák subverts the – in art history - often overpowering meaning of a pedestal and turns the ashlar, on which one finds the keyhole, to a self-contained object.
All in all, the exhibition is a successful presentation of Roman Ondák’s artistic creations of the past two years.
Galerie Martin Janda
1010 Vienna, Eschenbachgasse 11
Tel: +43 1 585 73 71
Fax: +43 1 585 73 72
email: galerie@martinjanda.at
www.martinjanda.at
Opening hours: Tue - Fri 11-18 hours, Sat 11-16 hours
Startgalerie im MUSA
Eva Engelbert – In the field
04.02.2014 – 28.02.2014
By Wolfgang Pichler
In general, this exhibition is dominated by rather unspectacular photos of sculptures in courtyards and fields in various community residences of the 1950s and 1960s. Since these are all small-format works the likeable impression of modesty is even stronger. Here, art is not a self-staging but tries to mediate between an increasingly apathetic audience and, the unjustly much too often ignored art in public space. It is gratifying, but at the same time alarming that the artist, born 1983, consequently points to the low form of cultural promotion and mediation – a task that is actually the responsibility of the public, more precisely, that of the City of Vienna. Alarming because one suddenly becomes aware of the fact that these works are not only ignored but that they don’t have a contemporary equivalent. High quality art objects are only positioned in public spaces for purposes of prestige, everything else is taken for granted.
The main installation of the show, a construction of stairs bearing diverse plants, refers to the actual situation in a public building belonging to the City of Vienna: the plants are on loan from people working on the floors above the gallery. And it also seems as if the artist does not want to distance herself or spectacularly reformulate something, but rather present the beauty of these simple objects.
Symbolically, one sculpture is located in the middle of the room: a concrete stele with the remains of a stolen fountain sculpture by Alois Heidel. Apart from the plinth, the work, entitled “Zugvogel” (Migrating Bird) is only made of the bird’s bronze feet that had been forcibly severed. The remaining second bird and the fragment on display are now part of the MUSA collection, thereby once again validating its important function as an archive – but also questioning whether or not it is sensible to protect art objects from too much accessibility and the risk of vandalism, by depriving it of its actual purpose of being a piece of art in a public space.
Startgalerie im MUSA
1010 Vienna, Felderstraße 6-8, next to the town hall
Tel: +43 (0)1 4000 8400
email: musa@musa.at
www.musa.at
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Fri: 11:00 - 18:00 hours; Thu 11:00 - 20:00 hours; Sat 11:00 - 16:00 hours
Galerie Ulysses
Guido Kucsko – The logical picture
30.01.2014 – 08.03.2014
By Wolfang Pichler
With the paintings in this exhibition it’s a bit like it is with Wittgenstein’s famous work – to which the exhibition refers. Initially – similar to the “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus” - one is confronted with rather general, but precisely formulated statements. Except that they don’t present themselves in language form but in picture form. However, at a second glance, one begins to understand how presentations of the same object can be analysed. Yet, like Wittgenstein’s philosophy, these are purely logical, cognitive games and are definitely not addressed to contemporaries with a poor knowledge of philosophy.
In the second room of the exhibition, the fundamental tone of the displayed prints changes. While, like the other objects, they are also presented in black-and-white, a kind of illogical-subjective view of the world seems to prevail. No longer are any statements being made; instead, symbolic portraits of the Wittgenstein family are shown: Paul and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
But ultimately the displayed objects equal, in their entirety, the analytical philosophy itself; not strictly logical and complete. These are thought-provoking impulses and an experiment to somehow come to grips with the unbelievable; in other words, to put our world in an order, even if it may only be the order of language or shapes. In any case, it is good that such trials are undertaken and, in view of the impossibility of finding a solution for the fundamental problem, the experiment can definitely be considered a success.
Galerie Ulysses
1010 Vienna, Opernring 21
Tel: +43 222/587 12 26
Fax: +43 222/587 21 99
email: ulysses@galerie-ulysses.at
www.kunstnet.at/ulysses
Opening hours: Tue - Fri 10-18 hours, Sat 10-13 hours
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
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