Teilen
English summaries June 1 - 15
Franz Josefs Kai 3
Philadelphia Connection - >>an ocean in between the waves<< young art positions of the Penn MFA program (2012 – 14)
28.05.2014 – 25.06.2014
By Margareta Sandhofer
Under the direction of the Canadian artist, Ken Lum, and following six months of teamwork with the curator, Roland Schöny, thirteen graduates from an art university in Philadelphia have put an exhibition into practice in the premises located in the Franz Josefs Kai 3 in Vienna's First District.
The training at the interdisciplinary Fine Arts Department at PENN University is versatile and involves an intensive, permanent challenge for the students from many different nations.
Accordingly, the different positions in the exhibition show a medial and contextual diversity as well as impressive autonomy, without compromising the overall impression of a group exhibition. Amongst others, works shown are those by the young artists Sam Mapp, Theo Mullen, Laura Bernstein, Dan O’Neill, Paz Ortúzur, and Clair Bidwell,
The young artists' presentation has succeeded, the individual positions are convincing, the synopsis indicates an impressive potential that operates highly professionally. The requirements and the collaboration of those involved appear to be optimal, the resident art universities will now be compared with these standards.
Franz Josefs Kai 3
1010 Vienna,
E-mail: office@franzjosefskai3.com
www.franzjosefskai3.com
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Art & Textile – Fabric as material and idea in the modern from Klimt to the present
21.03.2014 – 22.06. 2014
Daniela Gregori
Spinning, weaving and knotting belong to the cultural achievements which define man right from the beginning of his daily life and being. Not for nothing is it called "In the beginning was the textile art", with Gottfried Semper. For his last exhibition, "Art and Textile – Fabric as material in the modern from Klimt to the present", Markus Brüderlin has continued to spin these thoughts, activate considerations about the influence of textiles on the development of the modern and has thus applied himself once more to a great theme with a well-thought-out thesis. The works range from mediaeval tapestry to computer animation, from pre-Columbian textile fragments to Lucio Fontana's cut canvas and, in the accompanying publication, the curator gives fundamental considerations as to how inter-cultural dialogue can be orchestrated into the context of an exhibition.
Following the Art Museum Wolfsburg, for which the show was designed, it is now stopping off in a "more concentrated" form in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. This is, in principle, highly praiseworthy, but the over 100 artistic positions have been reduced to about 40 due to space restrictions. This should be kept in mind because sometimes one has difficulty in following the concept's red thread.
What begins with Gustav Klimt ultimately ends with Peter Kogler. In the exhibition's final room, the visitor finds himself, as it were, in an animated texture by Kogler. One will possibly feel reminded of the time in 2001 when Brüderlin set yardsticks for the Fondation Beyeler with another large exhibition including publication; he probably considered this in a similar way.
"The current project virtually forms the counterpart to Ornament and Abstraction", writes Markus Brüderlin in his foreword to the accompanying catalogue on "Art and Textile". Without doubt, the book has already become a standard work on the theme; in almost 400 pages, no questions are left unanswered. The only sad thing is that it has now become Brüderlin's legacy.
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
70173 Stuttgart, Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse 30-32
Tel: +49 711 470 40 0
Fax: +49 711 236 99 83
E-mail: info@staatsgalerie.de
www.staatsgalerie.de
Opening hours: Wed, Fri, Sat + Sun 10-18, Tue + Thu 10-20 hours
Schinkel Pavillon
Eva Kotatkova – Anatomical Orchestra
31.05.2014 – 20.07.2014
By Thomas W. Kuhn
For the difficult Schinkel Pavillon, Eva Kotátková (*1982 in Prague) has designed a tailor-made, round, black stage for the polygonal space: a location for the actions and for the plinth of the objects created for it. They are more or less appreciably recognizable as musical instruments, which only unfold their actual life in Kotátková’s performances. These instruments are spare parts and medial expansion of the human body in one, which forms the main benchmark of her works. These works form a tangible, formal and colourful unit in their arrangements which do not follow any explicit, comprehensible logic. Metal and material, partly coupled with objects oscillate between grey, black and white. With typewritten texts and collages broaden the field of interpretation in an anecdotal and associative way, and, with their low-tech aesthetic, the nostalgic trait whose historical roots unquestionably lie in Dadaism.
Kotátková not only affiliates formally with Dadism but also with its critical dimensions regarding the inter-relationship between society and individual and the defining power of her material, body-related manifestation. The nostalgic patina which especially emanates from the middle of the 20th century, transforms Kotátková's installation into a cipher for a longing for a lost era. One could argue against this romanticism, which, in the younger generation of artists is virulent, that Kotátková's approach is a sort of archaeological art.
Effectively, possible theoretical connections oscillate somewhere between Sigmund Freud, Siegfried Kracauer and Marshall McLuhan. And it also leads right to the middle of the mechanical erotic of Marcel Duchamps and Francis Picabias, which one thinks one finds cited in some of Kotátková's sculptures.
Schinkel Pavillon
10117 Berlin-Mitte, Oberwallstraße 1
Tel: +49 30 208 86 444
E-mail: info@schinkelpavillon.de
www.schinkelpavillon.de
Opening hours: Fri - Sun 12:00 - 18:00
Startgalerie im MUSA
Matthias Bernhard – Pictures in love
16.05.2014 – 18.06.2014
By Wolfgang Pichler
That a pure oil painting can become an object the moment one heaps enough colour on to it has been known at least since Eugene Leroy. And in his current show, Mathias Bernhard, born 1985, also avails himself of what has become standard usage in the repertoire of modern painting. However, here it's not simply a thick layer of colour as in the more or less known objects ranging from those created by Kiefer to Damisch, but many small sculptures of layers of colour which grow out of the canvas and yet give the whole a sense of harmony. The allure of these pictures lies in the discrepancy between looking at them from far and from close, because looked at closely it's about landscapes out of linseed oil and pigment, from a distance of a few meters, however, they are naive-abstract, very colourful pictures which to some extent, remind one of the organic pictures of Gunter Damisch referred to above. The sole thing that holds these two completely disparate impressions together remains the intensive smell of linseed oil, which is peculiar to all relatively new oil paintings. That other, also very successful not object-like, small format pictures on paper are also to be seen, already shows that it's all about a versatile artist with his own unmistakable style.
Admittedly, a prone object of oil paint on canvas clearly emphasizes the object-like character of the pictures, but is not, however, necessary and somewhat clouds the otherwise harmonious impression. It is also fascinating that here, a completely new generation is practicing and living a kind of art that is actually associated with the 1980's and the heyday of the postmodern era. Different from Leroy cited at the beginning of this article, who was more style-defining and at the height of his fame in the middle of the 20th century, Bernhard rather focuses on the play with colour.
Startgalerie im MUSA
1010 Vienna, Felderstrasse 6-8, next to the Town Hall
Tel: +43 (0)1 4000 8400
E-mail: musa@musa.at
www.musa.at
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Fri: 11:00 - 18:00; Thu 11:00 - 20:00; Sat 11:00 - 16:00 hours
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
 |
|
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
