translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
061014: 21er Haus - Sigmund Freud and the game with the burden of representation.
21er Haus
Sigmund Freud and the game with the burden of representation.
An installation by Joseph Kosuth
19.09.2014 to 11.01.2015
A mistake – from a psychoanalytical point of view
By Susanne Rohringer
On the 75th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's death, the 21er Haus is exhibiting an installation by the American concept artist, Joseph Kosuth, under the confusing title "Sigmund Freud and the game with the burden of representation".
On the 29th of September 1939, Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, died in exile in London aged 83 of tongue carcinoma. Evicted by the Nazis from his flat and practice in the Berggasse, the 82-year old gave the BBC an interview in which he alluded that he had come to England to "die in freedom". This interview was to be heard on today's anniversary of his death in the stairwell of the Berggasse 19.
For the exhibition in the 21er Haus, one could have wished for a bit more about Freud's remarkable biography and the methods of psychoanalysis.
Instead, Joseph Kosuth installed a course of art works on his moveable system "Zero & Not", which had already been used on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's death in his flat. It's all about large, white moveable walls, which are inscribed with passages from Sigmund Freud's works. The black sentences are crossed through with wide, black lines, thus making the text illegible. On these walls, which form a sort of exhibition architecture, Kosuth now hung works of renowned artists who, in his view, apparently have something to do with psychoanalysis. And yet the connections are not always clearly visible. And they don't always hit you in the eye like the psychoanalytical couch by Hans Hollein or the libraries by the artist duo Clegg & Guttmann. The viewer attempts to construe the connections and these often remain rather flat like the associations with the photography of Viennese Actionism by Rudolf Schwarzkogler or Günther Brus. That the Viennese Actionism has much more to do with repressed socio-political themes is, meanwhile, a platitude.
Due to the lack of a recurring theme, the selection of artists fail to convince. The individual works are often of good artistic quality, but Joseph Kosuth's approach to the psychoanalytical theme doesn't reveal this.
21er Haus
1030 Vienna, Schweizergarten/Arsenal-Straße 1
Tel: +43 1 795 57-0
E-mail: info@belvedere.at
http://www.21erhaus.at/
Opening hours: Wed-Sun 10-18 hours
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061014
Belvedere 21
1030 Wien, Schweizergarten/Arsenal-Straße 1
Tel: +43 1 795 57-0
Email: info@belvedere.at
http://www.belvedere21.at
Öffnungszeiten: Mi-So 10-18 h, Mi, Fr bis 21 h
Belvedere 21
1030 Wien, Schweizergarten/Arsenal-Straße 1
Tel: +43 1 795 57-0
Email: info@belvedere.at
http://www.belvedere21.at
Öffnungszeiten: Mi-So 10-18 h, Mi, Fr bis 21 h