Andrzej Steinbach, untitled (wet jacket), 2016. From the series: Ordinary Stones, 2016. Fine art print, 40 x 60 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Conradi Hamburg/Brussels.
Ein begleitendes Künstlerbuch wird bei Spector Books Leipzig erscheinen.
Nach Ingeborgs Tod vor erst wenigen Wochen, mit dem auch ich als Kuratorin dieses Projekts wie vielleicht auch einige von Ihnen im Wortsinn nicht “gerechnet” hatte (wie leicht es doch ist, Signale zu überhören, zu missdeuten oder gar zu ignorieren) musste der einführende Text zum Konzept und zur Arbeit für Folder und Pressetext ohnehin eine Diktion erhalten, die er in einer vorzeitig erstellten Version niemals gehabt hätte – eine Diktion, die jetzt (in der neuen Situation) zugleich eine Würdigung der Künstlerin selbst darstellte.
Ja, ein frühzeitig erstellter Text zum Projekt “Flora” hätte – wäre ich dem Wunsch Ingeborgs gefolgt und hätte vor der Zeit, vor dem Abgabetermin geliefert – verworfen werden müssen. Obwohl: Hätte er?
Heute frage ich mich: Vielleicht war es genau das, was Ingeborg wollte. Einen (hoffentlich) guten, bitte unsentimentalen, faktisch einführenden Text, ohne Zuschreibungen, die die Künstlerpersönlichkeit selbst betreffen, sondern der nur die Arbeit im Fokus hat.
In meinem Kurztext zur Ausstellung ist nun mit Blick auf Ingeborg Strobl zu lesen, dass sie unbestechlich, freigeistig, engagiert und autonom war. Man kann diese Worte sicher stehen lassen, auch, um ein Sensorium dafür zu entwickeln, wie sich ihr Werk – dieser große, offene, nicht abschließbare, und sich mit Ingeborgs Mäandern durch die unterschiedlichen Territorien der Welt und durch die unterschiedlichen Territorien der Kunst in immer wieder neuen Konstellationen verändernde Korpus – entwickelt hat. Man kann aber auch ausschließlich durch die Betrachtung der Arbeit einen Zugang entwickeln, der in exakt diese Zuschreibungen führt: unbestechlich, freigeistig, engagiert und autonom. Warum nicht genau so?
Ingeborg Strobl selbst hat immer wieder den für sie wichtigen Unterschied zwischen dem “Drinnen” und dem “Draußen” betont.
Das “Drinnen” war für sie die Kunstbetrieb, ein eigener abgeschlossener Kosmos, in dem sie sich zeitweilig bewegte und ihre Arbeiten zeigte – gepaart mit dem Verlangen, möglichst alle Bereiche der Produktion selbst in die Hand zu nehmen und zu steuern. Das zeigen ihre stets selbst gestalteten vielen (Künstler-)Bücher, ihre selbst entwickelten Ausstellungsdisplays und natürlich die Arbeiten selbst, die sich im jeweiligen Buch- oder Ausstellungsraum entfalten. Begleitende Texte kommen übrigens nicht viele vor, wenngleich ihre eigene Arbeit textbasiert ist.
Das “Draußen” hingegen war für sie das Leben, das sie (wie alle anderen Künstler_innen) ja neben der Kunst auch führte. Ein Raum, der genauso existenzbegründend und erfahrungsbeladen ist wie das “Drinnen”. Dieses “Draußen”, und was dort auffindbar ist, nach “Drinnen” zu holen, aber war Motor ihrer Arbeit. Oder wie Stella Rollig schreibt: “Das Werk (…) als Teil einer integralen Lebens- und Kunstpraxis, in der Sehen, Denken, Aufspüren, Entdecken, Fotografieren, Filmen, Formen und Gestalten kontinuierlich stattfinden, ineinander übergehen”. Ich glaube, dass Ingeborg Strobl die Grenzen zwischen dem “Drinnen” und “Draußen” für sich persönlich sehr genau gezogen hatte, anstelle des fließenden Ineinanderübergehens, wie es in dem Zitat von Rollig anklingt, würde ich eher von einem Transfer sprechen wollen, konzeptionell sehr genau und gleichzeitig trennscharf gedacht, aber nie übertheoretisiert.
Ich will mit dieser kleinen Rede meine Textschulden einlösen, und für Ingeborg die erwartete verschriftlichte Rahmung liefern, einen Text aber, der im “Drinnen” seinen Raum findet, der also nur das Konzept und die Arbeit im Blick hat und nicht Ingeborg als Persönlichkeit – das “Draußen” (meinetwegen können wir es auch Strobls “Denken über die Kunst und über das Leben und was das eine für das andere tun kann” nennen) zeigt sich dann schon ganz von selbst.
“Flora” – so hat die Künstlerin Ingeborg Strobl dieses Projekt für die Arbeiterkammer übertitelt. Es ist ein Begriff, der alle drei Ebenen, die diese Ausstellung umschließt (Wände, Bilder, Texte), zusammenführt.
Ebene 1: die Wände
Wie auch schon in früheren Ausstellungszusammenhängen, wie etwa in ihrer Ausstellung “Liebes Wien, Deine Ingeborg Strobl” im Wien Museum 2015 oder punktuell in ihrer großen Ausstellung im Lentos Museum Linz im vergangenen Jahr hat Ingeborg Strobl die Wände auch hier in verschiedenen Pastelltönen farbig gestaltet. Auf die unterschiedlichen Farbgründe wurde sodann in Walzentechnik ein je anderes florales, repetitives Muster aufgetragen. Ornamente sind entstanden, eine oft aufzufindende Praxis bei Strobl – nicht um ins Dekorative abzugleiten, sondern um das Ornament mit Inhalt aufzuladen. Sie will, wie Wolfgang Kos es einmal mit Blick auf die Künstlerin formulierte, das Schöne des Ornaments in einen Dialog bringen mit dem Nützlichen und dem Wichtigen.
Strobl greift mit der Technik der Musterwalzen die Wandgestaltungskultur profaner Wohnbauten auf, so wie sie sowohl im ländlichen als auch im städtischen Raum ab den 1920er Jahren bis in die 1970er Jahre auffindbar war. Sie schafft damit eine vertraut-wohnliche Atmosphäre. Und schleust mit dieser Entscheidung Formen einer universell verständlichen Alltagskultur in diesen Kunst (?)-Kontext?
Ebene 2: die Bilder
Die Bilder tun das ihrige dazu. Die Fotografien, die Ingeborg Strobl auf die Wände gebracht hat, stammen aus ihrem Archiv. Die Ökonomie der Mittel war ihr wichtig. Warum etwas Neues erfinden, wenn schon alles gefunden ist? In einem Text aus dem Jahre 2005 schreibt ebenfalls Wolfgang Kos von noch 500 unentwickelten Filmrollen Ingeborg Strobls, die Künstlerin fotografierte analog… es sind sicher noch einige nach dieser Zeit hinzugekommen, aus denen sie schöpfen konnte.
Ingeborg Strobl hat nie in abschließbaren Werkserien gedacht. Sie arbeitete auf allen Ebenen ihres Schaffens mit dem Prinzip der Collage, und bringt mit ihren Bildern, die sie ihrem enormen Fundus entnehmen konnte, in installativen Settings immer wieder neue Konstellation vor.
Gar nicht so einfach, als sogenannte Kunsttheoretikerin diese Motive in dieser Schlichtheit zuzulassen und auch in der Beschreibung unpräsentiös zu bleiben, ohne Übertheoretisierung, wie sie Ingeborg nicht mochte. Vielleicht kann man an dieser Stelle sagen, dass ihr Werk ganz grundsätzlich einen Charakter des Ephemeren hat. Das Beiläufige, Flüchtige und Unbestimmte war ihr Ausgangspunkt für die Entwicklung ihrer sich in räumlichen Zusammenhängen immer zu Installationen fügenden Arbeiten. Dabei aber ging es ihr nie um ein harmonisches Bild, so wie es in meiner Beschreibung ihres verbildlichten Jahreszeitenzyklus vielleicht angeklungen ist. Im Gegenteil. Der Lyrik setzte sie immer die Drastik entgegen, der Zartheit die Härte. Ingeborg Strobl reichte es nicht, gängige Vorstellungen von Naturschönheit zu bedienen. Sie arbeitete stets mit dem Prinzip der Gegensätzlichkeit, mit dem ihre Arbeiten ihren Biss erhalten. So setzt sie einer elegisch-vielleicht-romantischen Vorstellung von Natur den größtmöglichen Kontrast entgegen. Das Wilde, Ungestüme, Unzähmbare und Unaufhaltbare der sogenannten freien Natur mit ihrem (in den Bildern noch intaktem) biologischem Kreislauf trifft in ihrer Auswahl – hier in den mittleren beiden Wänden – auf die domestizierte Natur im städtischen Alltag, auf eine gestaltete und umgrenzte Garten- oder Vorgartenkultur, die sie noch in den kleinsten Winkeln, beispielweise in einer Schaufensterdekoration oder auch auf Grabstätten, findet.
Ebene 3: die Sprache
Strobls konzeptionelle Strenge und Genauigkeit, die sich erst mit einem zweiten Blick mitteilt, kommt über ihren Einsatz der Sprache schließlich auf der dritten Ebene des “Flora”-Projekt zur vollen Wirkung. Die textliche Rahmung lassen die sechs Wände auch auf einer formalen Ebene dichter zusammenrücken. Strobl braucht dafür nur vier Worte: Frühling, Sommer, Herbst und Winter. Diese vier Worte sind in diejenigen Sprachen übersetzt, die von den in der Halle wartenden Besucher_innen der Arbeiterkammer am häufigsten gesprochen werden: neben Deutsch und dem universellem Englisch sind dies Bosnisch, Kroatisch, Serbisch, Türkisch, Kurdisch und Ungarisch. Es ist klar, was die Künstlerin damit will: Nicht nur unterstreicht sie damit einfache Idee des gesamten Projekts “Flora” – die Thematisierung von Werden und Vergehen –, sondern holt mit ihnen auch fast alle Kund_innen der AK mit hinein in ihren Kosmos. Sie ist damit zugleich “Drinnen” und “Draußen” – wie auch jeder Betrachter und jede Betrachterin von “Flora”, wo auch immer jeder einzelne von uns sich gerade verorten mag. Es ist dies die große Qualität der Arbeit von Ingeborg Strobl: die Ebenen der Wahrnehmung tanzen zu lassen…. also dass “Draußen” zu erkennen, zuzulassen, und mit Scharfblick, subtiler Genauigkeit und mit Witz (!) ins “Drinnen” zu holen – vice versa.
Die Realisierung dieser Arbeit ist trotz Ingeborg Strobls großer konzeptioneller Sorgfalt, die noch beinahe jedes Detail im Blick hatte, nicht ohne die Hilfe Vieler zustande gekommen. Ich danke zunächst der AK und hier vor allem Roman Berka, der dieses Projekt von Anfang an mit großem Engagement begleitet hat, der nicht nur für Ingeborg Strobl ein wichtiger Gesprächspartner war, sondern auch vor Ort die Koordination mit allen weiteren Akteurinnen mit großer Umsicht übernommen hat. Danke Roman. Petra Egg hat auf der Grundlage des analogen Fotomaterials die Digitalisierung der Daten übernommen, den Print überwacht und sich um die Rahmung gekümmert. Auch dies konnte – wie das gesamte Projekt – noch von Ingeborg Strobl präzise vorbereitet werden. Herzlichen Dank, Petra Egg, dafür, dass wir heute vor wunderschönen Prints mit einer Hingabe ans Material, wie sie für Ingeborg typisch waren, stehen können.
Auch Anna Breitenberger war von Anfang an involviert und hat die ersten graphischen Konzeptionen für die sechs Wände erarbeitet, die die Grundlage bildeten für alle weiteren, von Ingeborg Strobl vorgenommenen Feinjustierungen. Ihr oblag mit Ingeborgs prekärer werdendem Gesundsheitszustand die Koordinierung des Projekts, und ich bedauere, dass Anna Breitenberger heute nicht persönlich anwesend sein kann, um meinen Dank persönlich entgegenzunehmen. Im weiteren Prozess der konkreten Umsetzung vor Ort sind schließlich Annelies Oberdanner und Alexandra Schlag hinzugekommen. Ihnen Beiden danke ich herzlich dafür, dass das farbliche und grafische Zusammenspiel von Wandfarbe und -muster und den Fotografien ganz im Sinne der Vorstellungen der Künstlerin – die uns heute fehlt – so feinsinnig und genau geworden ist.
Installationview Camera Austria at Kunstquartier Bethanien, from left to right: Isa Genzken, Stefanie Seibold, Annette Frick.
Friedl Kubelka, Pavillion (Atelier d’Expression / Clinique Psychiatrique de Fann, Dakar), 2015/16.
Exhibition view (cinema) Friedl Kubelka: Atelier d’Expression (Dakar), Camera Austria, Graz, 10.6. – 14.8.2017. Photo: Arlene Joobes.
Friedl Kubelka, Atelier d’Expression (Clinique Psychiatrique de Fann, Dakar), 2015/16.
Although a large portion of Friedl Kubelka’s œuvre involves portrait work, her artistic method is simultaneously always a way of working against the portrait. In fact, Kubelka constantly works against the idea of there being one valid picture. Her hourly, daily, or yearly portraits, all the way to a thousand-part portrait (“Tausend Gedanken”, 1980), are firstly time-cuts in the space of encounter between the artist and the person across from her; they speak of interplay among proximity and distance, of moving towards and away, or even deprivation. Perhaps they even speak more of the performance of encounter than actually presenting an image. The manipulative potential permeating her portrait sessions is especially evident in her films. The artist meets her protagonists with humour, devotion, or sometimes even with dispassion. The resulting images function as surveys of the status of both the person rendered and the image itself, a status which is constantly in motion. Stirring and touching unspoken norms without violently breaching them—this is the incredible strength yet also vulnerability of this œuvre, which cannot be termed documentary but rather brings forward the image as an event.
In the current portrait works, showing patients from the psychiatric ward of Fann Hospital in Dakar, it was important to the artist to maintain the integrity of her counterpart, and also to preclude the moments of derailment that repeatedly arise in her work—while especially (or once again!) making sure to fall short of expectations towards the represented vis-à-vis. Here we see no “outsiders”. This easily assigned ascription does not apply. Her protagonists are serious and tangible/unassailable. Their expressions or poses give no indication of an identity disorder. At times, art utensils like a paintbrush give an indication of their self-conception as artistically engaged individuals. Otherwise we—like the artist Papis (Babacar Gaye), whose face is largely covered by the grass in which he is resting—are left alone in the thicket of our diffuse conceptions of the people whom Friedl Kubelka came across in Senegal.
On the other hand, the exhibition speaks of different experiential levels owing to travel to a country that provokes a wealth of projections and ascriptions. The artist, as a purposely non-sovereign master of the traversed West African region, works with the inner and outer contradictions leading her through the country, and she lends visual form to these contrasts in photographs of architecture and urban structures, of their own seductive beauties and very real precipices. An artwork thus arose that may beg to be politically read, but in which, during the act of viewing, the personal realm of experience very clearly pushes itself in between and to the forefront again and again. This induces moments of disruption. Even just hearing the word “Africa” alarms us. We demand clarity, and objectivity, and knowledge, information, discretion, and precepts. All this must be conveyed by the work of a European artist who is moving within this space. All this may be of interest or known to the artist, but for her work on the image this expectation plays no role whatsoever. Kubelka expressly does not push aside the common, extant projections in order to arrive at an adjusted image that, in the best case scenario, conveys objectifiable knowledge or establishes an unassailable work. Instead, she presents herself through her images as a traveller and foreigner who is guilty/innocent, knowledgeable/lacking in knowledge, open-curious/full of angst and shame. Only one thing is pivotal: anything goes.
Exhibition view Friedl Kubelka: Atelier d’Expression (Dakar), Camera Austria, Graz, 10.6. – 14.8.2016. Photo: Arlene Joobes.
Friedl Kubelka, Papis (Babacar Gaye), 2015/16.
In the case of the exhibition jointly developed here, the artist used the invitation to provocatively thwart the mechanisms of exhibition production. She did so by channelling “foreign” works into the exhibition—works by people who work artistically but would themselves never be able to find a place for presenting their artwork in our context. So while the artist, on the one hand, herself decided on the unsaleability of her work, she used her invitation to participate in an institutional context, on the other, to gain access to a space for those who can hardly garner visibility for their artistic work. But the subversiveness of her activity does not end here. It goes beyond Friedl Kubelka’s idea to integrate “foreign” works in the exhibition to actually have them be sold in an a(u)ction initiated by her, thus offensively marking them as “saleable”. With the aim of also ascribing value to these works—value that, of course, is also reflected by a price. With the aim of providing the artist-patients with a wage for their work. And with the aim of becoming more concrete and showing appreciation towards the Atelier d’Expression in the Senegalese city of Dakar and the artists working there in a way that is more than just ideational.
Gan Jah (Ndiaga Ndiaye), Le monde qui pleure, 2015.
Salvatore Viviano selling art in the frame of the a(u)ction “Buy Art from the Atelier d’Expressiom”, initiated by Friedl Kubelka and Georg Gröller, performed by Salvatore Viviano, music by Ibou Ba, 10.6.2016, on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition: Friedl Kubelka: Atelier d’Expression (Dakar), Camera Austria, Graz. Photo: Alessio Eberl.
Today Outsider Art is used as an established concept of style, as if it actually denoted a specific style analogous to other genres. But those who take a more in-depth look will note that the works by the various artists subsumed here are hardly related. So what might Outsider Art really be? Indeed, it is not a style, it does not encompass a specific geographic area, it fails to delineate any clear time period, nor does it denote a particular artistic orientation.
So the question is whether a categorisation as Outsider Art is even able to imbue the creators of the artwork with a sense of (new) dignity. Or whether it would conversely serve to once again marginalise or even patronise them? Clearly, the acknowledgement of so-called “Outsider Art” represents a gesture of liberation, which has helped to discover unique works of art. In the case of the works channelled into this specific exhibition context by Friedl Kubelka, it is worthwhile to acknowledge that art can be created in unexpected places, and that its meaning does not necessarily depend on whether the originators are knowledgeable about art and its history—whichever history of art. What counts is the work itself, its aesthetic richness and complexity, the thoughts and references that it formulates, its precision and the risks it takes. The question of “inside” or “outside” is unimportant and debilitating, for it hampers understanding. For example, works of Art Brut have been traditionally treated as examples of “primal” art, existing beyond the confines of time and history. They actually all tell—often more than we would like—°“of a world that we believe to know. Behind superficial unworldliness, they spread out repressed realities, unfold inhibited yearnings, call for promises to be redeemed, and remind of ignored injustices” (Daniel Baumann). The exhibited works speak to all of the above. With the exhibition of Friedl Kubelka, we are leaving the corral in which outsider art has been enclosed and opening ourselves up to their work as art—and solely as art. This is how the artist Friedl Kubelka introduces it to us. And just as Friedl Kubelka has given the artist-patients names and is showing them as creative personalities in her photographs, now we can try to encounter them and their works in an open and unbiased way. Still, it remains to be seen as to whether we will succeed in this without stylising them as foreign matter or allowing them to degenerate into a symptom—not only in this project, but everywhere that we come into contact with so-called “Outsider Art”.
Friedl Kubelka, Gan Jah (Ndiaga Ndiaye), 2015/16.
Friedl Kubelka, untitled, 2015/16.
Friedl Kubelka, Papisto Boy (Pape Mamadou Samb, 1951–2015): Peinture Murale (Peter Tosh, Zone Industrielle, Dakar), 2015/16.
Exhibition view Friedl Kubelka: Atelier d’Expression (Dakar), Camera Austria, Graz, 10.6. – 14.8.2016. Photo: Arlene Joobes.
Arbeiterkammer Wien, 22.5. – 30.10.2015 (Kat.)
kuratiert von Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Textauszug aus Sven Johne, „Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele“, 2015.
Diese Ungleichheit ist Folie für die von Sven Johne* entwickelte Arbeit „Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts“. Seine „Fallbei-spiele“ sind Ausdruck gesellschaftlicher Fragmentierung. Mit seinen reportageartigen Berichten gibt er Einblicke in die Isolation von gesellschaftlichen Absteigern, Umsteigern und Aussteigern, aber auch in die Lebensentwürfe ihrer Aufsteiger. Ganz gezielt gibt Sven Johne den Anspruch der Nachweislichkeit seiner Geschichten auf. Vielmehr speisen sich seine „Fallbeispiele“ aus Zitaten, Parodien und Anspielungen sowie aus frei Erfundenem, mit denen sowohl die Biografien von Gewinnern wie auch die von Verweigerern, Aktivisten, Aufsässigen und die von den gänzlich Unfreien – ob arbeitslos, obdachlos oder arm – zu je genau diesem unausweichlichen Punkt zuzulaufen scheinen, den Johne in den „Anomalien“ aufnimmt. Viele seiner Geschichten erscheinen vollkommen absurd, keine jedoch unglaubhaft. Ihr Aberwitz führt direkt in die irgendwie auch stimulierende Abgründigkeit der Gegenwart. Offen bleibt, inwieweit das faktische Auseinanderdriften der Gesellschaft einem erweiterten Möglichkeitsraum der Postmoderne geschuldet ist, die durch die Erosion einengender Werte und Moralvorstellungen wie durch zunehmende „Individualisierung“ dem Einzelnen neue Optionen ermöglicht – oder aber ob sich unter dem Druck kalter neoliberaler Durchkapitalisierung der Zwangs- charakter des „Sich-neu-Erfinden-und-Abfinden-Müssens“ durchsetzt.
Mit den „Fallbeispielen“ aus den „Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts“ fügt Sven Johne in rund 70 Berichten und 90 dazugehörenden Porträtfotografien (ohne dass diese unmittelbar eindeutig zuzuordnen sind) die „Fragmentierten“ wieder zusammen. Je nach Lesart erinnern sie an den „Mitarbeiter des Monats“, an die „Straße der Besten“ oder schlicht an Fahndungsplakate. Eine neue Form der Gesellschaftlichkeit ergibt sich damit freilich nicht. Vielmehr reflektiert dieses Projekt mit seiner düsteren Komik die Folgeerscheinungen eines Gegenwartskapitalismus, der sich als „vernünftig“, „rational“ und „alternativlos“ beschreibt, dem aber zusehends das „Gemeinwohl“ abhandenkommt.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Installationsansicht Sven Johne, Anomalien des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts / Einige Fallbeispiele, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2015. Foto: Leonhard Hilzensauer.
Erik van der Weijde, aus der Serie / from the series: Maria Lucia, 2010–14.
Erik van der Weijde, aus der Serie / from the series: Deer Park, 2011.
Erik van der Weijde, aus der Serie / from the series: Patinoires, 2006.
Erik van der Weijde, aus der Serie / from the series: Der Baum – Pomerode, 2014.
Erik van der Weijde, aus der Serie / from the series: Praia, 2004.
Erik van der Weijde, aus der Serie / from the series: This is not my Son, 2009.
Erik van der Weijde, aus der Serie / from the series: Siedlung, 2008.
Erik van der Weijde, aus der Serie / from the series: Senate, 2014.
Erik van der Weijde, aus der Serie / from the series: Hiroshima, 2011.
Erik van der Weijde’s photographic practice is therefore closely linked to his sweeping editorial and publishing practice, with his artwork virtually becoming ordered through the production of zines and books. However, his editing and publishing efforts most especially serve to facilitate the “reading” of his images, which are committed to an unfalsifying documentary style.
It is no coincidence that his upcoming project scheme of creating a comprehensive publication to chronicle the last twelve years of his publishing pursuits as a kind of dérive coincides with increased exhibition activity. This has arisen from his desire to more clearly impart the cosmological context of his image complexes—and to present, more strongly than before, that which has evolved in terms of form and content into individual work series (and therefore into zines and artist books) as an artistic project that brings these photographs together.
When we reflect on the artist books by Erik van der Weijde with his “4478Zine Publishing Manifesto” in mind—which meanwhile contains fourteen simply yet precisely phrased paragraphs—a renewed connection to the strategies of 1960s Conceptual Art readily becomes apparent: departure from the individual image, creating work series, commitment to a documentary style, the ostensible banality of what is captured, bowing to a research-based idea, the book as art form and democratic medium. All of these basic principles are found to be quite accurately honoured in Van der Weijde’s publications. They should thus most definitely be viewed in relation to the type of artist book established by Ed Ruscha. Each of his books is dedicated to a particular subject, none of which seem to relate to the others, for example, housing settlements erected in Nazi Germany, car crashes, animals, portraits of mother and son in staged and re-enacted family photos, corruption in Brazilian politics, found pictures of tanks, firearms, fighter planes, and bonsai plants, prostitution, street lanterns designed by Albert Speer, mighty trees in ominous places, his son sleeping, his mother-in-law in a domestic setting, the Amsterdam canals viewed from a boat, recurring elements in everyday Brazilian culture, Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasília, or the VW Beetle. All of these things encountered in the work of Erik van der Weijde not only share, in equal measure, universal validity; they also lay claim to what is admittedly a quite difficult-to-grasp “meaning” that alludes to an underlying something. This is indicated by the artist’s strategic decision to compile, from the outset, his zines and books into series on a regular basis and to then present them as parts of a greater whole.
The exhibition at Camera Austria, which has been developed in close collaboration with the artist, is thus pursuant to the concept of uncoupling his pictures from the carrier material of the book page and attempting a different approach to viewing and seeing (and also a different act of haptically experiencing) his images—as photographs. Also pursued is the idea of carving out the nature of equality of his different motif worlds as the conceptual nucleus of his work. The order that has evolved in Erik van der Weijde’s work through the publishing of books, each dedicated to a different thematic area, dissipates, as it were, in the exhibition. Rooms separated from each other by two book covers are opened so that the photographs respectively shown there wander out—as if originating in an archive—to form a monumental table sculpture. It is here that the images become re-disseminated in a different way so as to create a new “Gebilde” that is both incomplete and non-completable. One of Van der Weijde’s special skills is to assemble contradictory elements in all of his pictures, be it in portraits of his wife Ana and his son Caetano or prostitutes along the beach, in a photograph of a towering tree at the grave of Adolf Hitler’s parents, or in an image showing cattle ready for slaughter, in pictures of public rubbish bins or the representational architecture of Brazil—elements that are familiar and alien, banal and exceptional, absurd and normal, tragic and comical, allowed and forbidden, innocent and guilty, full of love and desire all at the same time. In his photographs, Erik von der Weijde services forms of visuality that allow beholders to see and watch, and perhaps also to recognise how all of these things interrelate, are mutually dependent, and also become situated in these particular contexts.
On the heels of exhibitions by Wolfgang Tillmans (2007), Annette Kelm (2009), Tobias Zielony (2011), Sven Johne (2013) and Joachim Koester (2014) this show at Camera Austria is likewise the first international solo presentation of the artist in Austria.
Erik van der Weijde: Gebilde. Ed. by Maren Lübbke-Tidow, with contributions by Pierre Dourthe, Frits Gierstberg, Maren Lübbke-Tidow. Dan Rule, Erik van der Weijde, Jan Wenzel (ger. / eng. / fre. / ndl.). Edition Camera Austria, Graz 2014. 96 pages, 11,3 cm x 17 cm, 6 b/w illustrations.
ISBN 978-3-902911-12-4, € 9,90buy this book: Erik van der Weijde, Gebilde
Exhibition view Erik van der Weijde, Gebilde, Camera Austria, Graz, 6.12.2014 – 15.2.2015. Photo: Lupi Spuma.
Exhibition view Erik van der Weijde, Gebilde, Camera Austria, Graz, 6.12.2014 – 15.2.2015. Photo: Lupi Spuma.
Exhibition view Erik van der Weijde, Gebilde, Camera Austria, Graz, 6.12.2014 – 15.2.2015. Photo: Lupi Spuma.
Exhibibtion view Erik van der Weijde, Gebilde, Camera Austria, Graz, 6.12.2014 – 15.2.2015. Photo: Lupi Spuma.
Exhibtion view Erik van der Weijde, Gebilde, Camera Austria, Graz, 6.12.2014 – 15.2.2015. Photo: Lupi Spuma.
Jochen Lempert, o.T. (Poem), 2014. Installation View Camera Austria, Redaktion Berlin, Kunstquartier Bethanien.
Against this background—and considering the focus on photographic projects—the aim was also to show the extent to which image production, or strategies of representation, does not solely have to involve visuality, and that it cannot primarily be evaluated according to the question of the relationship between picture and “reality”, regardless of the form this takes. If images have always occupied political territory, then it is surely precisely because, as “documents”, they simultaneously set “discourse” into motion, because they are positioned exactly at the junction between what is visible and what is expressible—“a nexus where political, institutional, and social antagonisms play themselves out in the materiality of representation” (W. J. T. Mitchell). The exhibition series “Art Is Concrete” engendered a space that was designed to foster an opportunity to encounter, through representation, the most divergent facets of such materialising antagonisms.
Camera Austria would like to follow up on these explorative questions in the context of the steirische herbst festival 2013: with the leitmotif “Liaison Dangereuses”, the festival is putting up for negotiation the many—necessary? strategic, transitory, precarious— alliances and cooperative relationships that come to life “after the revolution”, with an aim to conceptualise and pursue both artistic and cultural—and, most especially, political—“production” under altered conditions. Which political spaces have now opened up? Which still remain contested or are in danger of quickly disappearing again? Have new players become established? Has the capacity to act newly shifted among the players? Who is starting to write the story of such upheaval, applying it to a new societal order? Which continuities and discontinuities are taking effect? How can artistic practices even succeed in translating the complex political, institutional, and social antagonisms into a materiality of representation? In other words, which role might concepts of representation play?
How can the dichotomy of the question of representation be resolved? The latter question is addressed by the St. Petersburg group Chto Delat as follows: “In the present situation, where anti-representational strategies dominate both within the new political movements and in politically engaged art, it seems that the entire debate is reducible to a clear and simple scheme: representation equals hierarchy and is thus bad. The corresponding antithesis is that a rejection of representation equals the absence of hierarchy and is thus a good thing.” Does the only answer to this question imply departing from the spaces of art to become active “in real life”? Or is it conceivable to transform the spaces of art to make room there for negotiating common affairs?
The title “Unexpected Encounters” is a metaphor for the attempt to convert, over the course of eight weeks, the institutional space of Camera Austria into a realm of unexpected exploration of these questions, which may initially be characterised by misjudgements, inappropriate assumptions, and dubious cultural differences. A number of initiatives and groups from various countries—whose “revolutions” and political/societal upheaval at times dates back over ten years or more—are invited to start developing the format for a transfer in collaboration with Camera Austria:
How can these political issues be transferred into the realm of cultural production without replacing political aspects with cultural ones and thus making them disappear? “How is it, then, possible to produce a critical stance within this context? Moreover, how is it possible to develop emancipatory strategies in the field of art and cultural production? Well, there is no simple answer to this question. The contemporary institution of culture is a battlefield, and—to paraphrase Foucault—since there is no power without the resistance(s), each position is an outcome of struggle. What we can do and what we are trying to do is to arti- culate those points of resistance by intervening within the existing constellation. But, criticism as the discursive form of an intervention in the ‘public sphere’ can only be a starting point. Critique—a veritable materialist critique—in order to be efficient, i.e., to produce effects in the material reality of the social exchange, must be practical—it must intervene within and strive to tackle the existing and ongoing social practices” (prelom kolektiv).
Indeed, how can the insistence on deferring the realignment and the discontinuance of options be maintained, which made possible the unexpected spaces of resistance, where the state of exception has already passed and a collective desire for normalisation is giving rise to new myths of order, history, and identity? Which pictures are associated with this desire for normalisation? And which opportunities can be devised to delay the naturalisation of these pictures?
Sven Johne, Empire, 2004, from the series: Ship Cancellation.
For his first extensive solo presentation in Austria, the artist combines a selection of works from recent years with new projects which pinpoint this precarious, controversial and increasingly questioned space of “documentality” (Hito Steyerl) of the visual in the world of today. In this respect, the exhibition project focuses on the specific practices and methods in which Sven Johne involves the photographic image in different projects in different places: the claim for reportage, the interest in marginal events, the missing of representation, the gap between text and image—whereby the artist outlines an essential contribution to the current debate circling around the documentary.
Installation View Sven Johne Where the sky is darkest, the stars are brightest, Camera Austria 2013. Photo: Tobias Ehrhardt.
Separately, all elements of this project—the places, the photos, and the texts—do not aim at anything essential: On site, there isn’t any truth to be discovered, or any crucial and exemplary representation to be wrested from any individual specific presence. Moreover, the lower part of the glazing of the prints shown in the exhibition is covered by a silkscreen surface, where the visitors can read the associated diary entry. Hence, also the last possibility to identify an actual place on the basis of details of landscapes or buildings is made impossible and masked out by this text box.
Der Wachmann schaut misstrauisch, als ich meine Kamera neben der Goldmine aufbaue. Ein Anschlag im Ort verrät: die Mine gehört seit letztem Jahr zu 95 Prozent einem kanadischen Bergbauunternehmen. Seit einigen Monaten immer wieder Proteste der lokalen Bevölkerung. Es ist die ertragreichste Förderstätte Griechenlands. Das Land ist reich. / The guard looks suspicious as I set up my camera near the goldmine. A flyer in the village reveals that the site is now 95-percent owned by a Canadian mining company. For months there have been local protests. It’s the most profitable mine in all of Greece. The land is rich.
It is local events, moments of stepping out of order, which attract the artist’s attention and from which he builds a mosaic of details. It is under the starry night sky as a metaphor for order and navigation where he staged these incoherent details, like an odyssey that requires cunning to reach one’s destination. What we get from the laboratory of the neoliberal annihilation of an entire country is only pictures of its night sky and the artist’s anecdotes from his trips. Hence, the future is more than uncertain, and this work presents ambivalent motifs between aberration, hope and salvation.
What has been created is a reportage whose form pretends to act like reportage. And it is more than anything else this “dissonance” between the image and its meaning, between the image and the “event”, the shift between what can be seen and what can be said, what the text ‘shows’, which reveals the fundamental ambivalence between “discourse” and “document” inherent in the documentary: Documentary images were put under general suspicion already a long time ago, their truthfulness was dismissed, and our trust in what they show disappeared. Nevertheless, these documentary images are proliferating more than ever within a large number of media environments.
It is by separating the elements which must meet in order to link an image to any specific meaning that Sven Johne exhibits his specific examination of the documentary. In this way he provides an important contribution to opening up possibilities; to conceiving new linkages to meaning by means of images, especially documentary ones; to introducing a basically open space of meaning production which can be understood as a space for other visual politics.
Stefanie Seufert, things without a name, 2012.
Stefanie Seufert, things without a name, 2012.
Stefanie Seufert, things without a name, 2012.
Stefanie Seufert, things without a name, 2012.
The spectators of her object-studies are left uncertain about the actual nature of the photographed objects, about the nature of the gorgeous conifers (2006/2007) with their complete record of cultural traditions, or about the nature of the leftovers from a consumer ́s world that are presented in “things without a name” (2012), therefore about things that even do not have a name, that have never been signified. The objects that Stefanie Seufert found and photographed seem to be equally strange as well as emblematic. Seufert is thwarting with those images the emphatic faith in the objective exposure that is dominating the genre since it ́s emergence in the 1920s: “By relying entirely on the chance (and the changing) appearance of the things and the openness of how they can be interpreted, Stefanie Seufert ́s works resist the concept of a complete domination of the image, muss less a domination of information.” (Florian Ebner) The strict orientation towards formal criteria, like the visual reduction, the negation of narration and the decision for a pure object- oriented representation, is filling the images with a mannered presence. This strategy is emphasising the hybrid character of her photographs that lead beyond the actual point of seeing and understanding to the oscillating boarder between vision and comprehension.
Stefan Panhans, Items for Possible Videosets #5, 2009.
Stefan Panhans, Items for Possible Videosets #8, 2009.
Stefan Panhans, Items for Possible Videosets #17, 2009.
Stefan Panhans, Items for Possible Videosets #11, 2010.
Even if the visual index, to which the photographs of Stefan Panhans and Stefanie Seufert refer to, are partly different – the dryness and the sometimes denying character of Seufert ́s photographs are contrasting with the strange and abysmal items of Panhans – their works have a laconic- ironic base in common, that both use to work towards a subtle manipulation of an alleged transparent view on the realness of things.
Exhibition view Stefanie Seufert & Stefan Panhans, Objects & Items, Kerstin Engholm Galerie, Wien, 18.1. – 5.3.2013.
Exhibtion view Stefanie Seufert & Stefan Panhans, Objects & Items, Kerstin Engholm Galerie, Vienna.
Exhibition view Stefanie Seufert & Stefan Panhans, Objects & Items, Kerstin Engholm Galerie, Vienna.
Exhibition view Stefanie Seufert & Stefan Panhans, Objects & Items, Kerstin Engholm Galerie, Vienna.
Exhibition view Stefanie Seufert & Stefan Panhans, Objects & Items, Kerstin Engholm Galerie, Vienna.
Michael Schmidt, #05.046, aus der Serie Berlin nach 45, 1980, Bromsilbergelatineprint, 16,3 × 22,6 cm.
Installationsansicht Michael Schmidt, Berlin nach 1945. Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2012.
Installationsansicht Michael Schmidt, Berlin nach 1945. Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2012.
Installationsansicht Michael Schmidt, Berlin nach 1945. Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2012.
Installationsansicht Michael Schmidt, Berlin nach 1945. Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2012.
Installationsansicht Michael Schmidt, Berlin nach 1945. Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2012.
Installationsansicht Michael Schmidt, Berlin nach 1945. Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2012.
Installationsansicht Michael Schmidt, Berlin nach 1945. Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2012.
Installationsansicht Michael Schmidt, Berlin nach 1945. Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2012.
Installationview Stefanie Seufert, universal cool sky warm day, Camera Austria, Redaktion Berlin, Kunstquartier Bethanien.
Installationview Stefanie Seufert, universal cool sky warm day, Camera Austria, Redaktion Berlin, Kunstquartier Bethanien.
Installationview Stefanie Seufert, universal cool sky warm day, Camera Austria, Redaktion Berlin, Kunstquartier Bethanien.
Installationview Stefanie Seufert, universal cool sky warm day, Camera Austria, Redaktion Berlin, Kunstquartier Bethanien.
Installationview Stefanie Seufert, universal cool sky warm day, Camera Austria, Redaktion Berlin, Kunstquartier Bethanien.
Installationview Stefanie Seufert, universal cool sky warm day, Camera Austria, Redaktion Berlin, Kunstquartier Bethanien.
Camera Austria, Graz, 8.7. – 4.9.2011
curated by Maren Lübbke-Tidow and Reinhard Braun
Tobias Zielony, Ghost, aus der Serie / from the series: Manitoba. Winnipeg, CAN, 2009/2011. Courtesy: Tobias Zielony + KOW BERLIN.
Tobias Zielony’s work always combines social reality with protagonists, with fields of action of social individuals. But what picture does his documentary practice draw of these social individuals? Tobias Zielony has gained renown in recent years with series on young people from Europe and the USA; his pictures exemplarily pose this question as to the subject production of documentary photographic images, as to what photography still does with the people it depicts. Together with Tobias Zielony, we are developing an exhibition that, with the aid of additional contributions, including film and literature, explores this terrain of the documentary as a space of action from the perspective of a performativity of images.
In parallel to the exhibition we have collaborated with Tobias Zielony on a thematic issue of the magazine Camera Austria International 114 / 2011 in which we explore the issue of the documentary as political practice.
Still from: Tobias Zielony. Manitoba, Installationview Camera Austria 2011. Photo: Steffen Strassnig.
Tobias Zielony, Selkirk 2, aus der Serie / from the series: Manitoba. Winnipeg, CAN, 2009/2011. Courtesy: Tobias Zielony + KOW BERLIN.
Installationview Tobias Zielony. Manitoba, Camera Austria 2011. Photo: Steffen Strassnig.
Installationview Tobias Zielony. Manitoba, Camera Austria 2011. Photo: Steffen Strassnig.
Tobias Zielony, Chronic, aus der Serie / from the series: Manitoba. Winnipeg, CAN, 2009/2011. Courtesy: Tobias Zielony + KOW BERLIN.
Arbeiterkammer Wien, 3.12.2010 – 20.5.2011
kuratiert von Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Wenn man über kulturelles Engagement in der Arbeiterkammer sprechen will, dann wird schnell klar, dass dieses im Idealfall an die Kernaufgaben dieser öffentlichen Institution gebunden bleiben sollte: Hier kommen Menschen aus unterschiedlichen Lebensbereichen zusammen, die Fragen aus der Arbeitswelt besprechen – Anlass für die deutsche Künstlerin Peggy Buth* den Tugenden und Unbilden der Arbeit ein Bild entgegenzusetzen, dass mit dem Begriff der Arbeit untrennbar verbunden ist und gleichsam seinen Gegenpol bildet: das Bild der Freizeit.
Peggy Buth wählt dafür das irdisch-entrückte Sehnsuchtsmotiv Himmel. In unterschiedlichen Farbschattierungen zieht er auf den sechs Wänden im Eingangs- und Wartebereich der Arbeiterkammer in monumentaler Größe und mit maximaler Tiefenwirkung die Blicke auf sich. Die jeweiligen Titel der Arbeiten geben einen Hinweis darauf, dass Peggy Buth die Himmelsmotive nicht in freier Natur, sondern in mittlerweile historischen Abenteuerromanen und Reisekatalogen gefunden hat – Bücher und Prospekte, die oftmals kolonial inspiriert sind, (europäische) Imaginationen des Fremden und Exotischen, Druckwerke also, die verborgene Begehren wecken und Expeditions- bzw. Eroberungsphantasien wachrufen. Die Ausschnitte, die Peggy Buth aus diesen Vorlagen ausgewählt und re-fotografiert hat, zeigen an, dass diese Bilder Konstruktionen sind, die Vergrößerung ins Monumentale führt das Blau des Himmels als Surrogat vor: in manchen Büchern und Katalogen wurde das Blau des Himmels gar nachträglich hinzugefügt und handkoloriert. Die monumentalen Vergrößerungen von Peggy Buth führen diesen Konstruktionscharakter in überraschender Klarheit und Präzision vor. Ihre Himmelsmo-tive legen nicht nur die Struktur des Druckrasters offen sowie die haptischen Qualitäten des Papiers und etwa seine Alterungserscheinungen, sie zeigen auch an, mit welchen Strategien und mit welchen Methoden am Repräsentationscha-rakter des (fotografischen) Bildes festgehalten und beständig gearbeitet wurde, um es möglichst glaubhaft vorzuführen. Die Modi der visuellen Repräsentation des Begehrens mit der eigenen forschenden Arbeit sichtbar zu machen, ist eine der grundlegenden Strategien Peggy Buths. In Das Blaue vom Himmel gelingt ihr dies mit großer konzeptueller Strenge und Einfachheit.
Installationsansicht Peggy Buth, Das Blaue vom Himmel, Arbeiterkammer Wien, 2010.
Installationsansicht Peggy Buth, Das Blaue vom Himmel, Arbeiterkammer Wien. 2010
Installationsansicht Peggy Buth, Das Blaue vom Himmel, Arbeiterkammer Wien. 2010.Photos: Wolfgang Thaler
with: Thomas Bayrle, Walead Beshty, Björn Braun, Agnieszka Brzeżańska, Natalie Czech, Jeanne Faust, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Aurélien Froment, Sylvia Henrich, Horáková + Maurer, Susan Howe / James Welling, Margarete Jakschik, Annette Kelm, Herwig Kempinger, Heinz Peter Knes, Ernst Koslitsch, Tatiana Lecomte, Jochen Lempert, Ulrike Lienbacher, Lotte Lyon, Eva Maria Ocherbauer, Markéta Othová, Michael Schmidt, Gregor Schmoll, Roman Schramm, Stefanie Seufert, Dirk Stewen, Josef Strau, Barbara Trautmann, Susanne Winterling
Camera Austria, Graz, 26.9.2010 – 9.1.2011
curated by Maren Lübbke-Tidow and Reinhard Braun
Installation View Milk Drop Coronet, Camera Austria, Graz 2010.
Installation View Milk Drop Coronet, Camera Austria, Graz 2010.
Installation View Milk Drop Coronet, Camera Austria, Graz 2010.
In 30 table-top showcases 30 artists present their exhibition within the exhibition. The limited space emphasises the artists’ experimental handling of their photographic material. For example with silhouettes, double exposures, photocollages and photograms, but also with a marked tendency to remove colour from the photographic image, artists are currently once again favouring those techniques that allow them not only to emphasise forms and figurations in the image, but which also permit, as it were, an atmospheric and exaggerated, speculative representation of the object world. In this sense the exhibited works relate to debates on possible links to aesthetic projects following modernism – for example to New Objectivity with its fixation on structure and form or to surrealistic aesthetics of mystification and metaphorisation of the object world.
The selected artists avail themselves of a method of “unobjective objectivity” whose logic would seem to lie somewhere between concealed allusion and succinct, overt showing, with which they address a constantly renewed handling of classical questions of representation, to which photography remains bound.
Particularly in the visual media, countless unimportant details often prevent us from noticing what is most important – a phenomenon that sociologist Pierre Bourdieu referred to as “hiding by showing”. For Bourdieu this phenomenon also has political implications, because what is commonplace hides what is important, because the spectacularisation of banality hides the interest in imperceptible changes, and because the world is transformed into an incoherent sequence of incomprehensible snapshots. Or, as Alain Badiou puts it: “It is what orders, in all the arts, the formal principle: the capacity to render visible for everyone what, for the medium and for commerce, and thus also for everyone (…) does not exist.”
Thus, by using their formal devices and with the aid of their images the artists at the exhibition seem to pursue a counter-strategy: they show by hiding – they thus slow down the interpretation of the images and reject a purely superficial orientation based on what is depicted. In a way, they follow Bourdieu’s call to make usual things unusual, to portray them in such a way as to make visible how extraordinary they are – like the milk drop frozen in time in Edgerton’s photo.
One key link to the theme of steirischer herbst 2010 – “Masters, tricksters, bricoleurs” – is the exhibition dispositif of the thirty table-top showcases as thirty “exhibition spaces”: a terrain of showing and seeing that differs markedly from the convention of the white cube and which entangles visitors intimately and distractedly in both the formal and image-political debate through and between the exhibited positions. How much virtuosity must the viewers muster to create the “text” of the exhibition? By oscillating on the thin line between seeing and knowing, history and aesthetics, contingency and emblematism, objectivity and mystification, they also challenge the traditional allocations of photography as a technique of showing and seeing but also, in so doing, the rules of recognition, interpretation and understanding.
Photos: Christian Wachter
Camera Austria, Graz, 27.9.2009-17.1.2010
curated by Christine Frisinghelli and Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Installation View Artur Żmijewski, Democracies and other works, 2009.
Artur Żmijewski, Demonstration of the “Solidarity” Trade Union / Demonstration der Gewerkschaft “Solidarność”, 29.8.2008 Warschau, Polen.
Artur Żmijewski, Re-enactment of the Warsaw Uprising (1944) battle of the Mokotów district, / Nachstellung der Schlacht um den Bezirk Mokotów beim Warschauer Aufstand (1944), 9.8.2008,Warschau, Polen.
Artur Żmijewski, 60th Anniversary of the Nakba / 60. Jahrestag der Nakba, 15.5.2008, Ramallah, West Bank.
Camera Austria, Graz, 10.7.2009 – 13.9.2009
curated by Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Annette Kelm, Archeology and Photography, 2008. C-print, 70,6 cm x 86,6 cm. Courtesy: Johann König, Berlin.
Annette Kelm, Big Print #6 (Jungle Leaves – Cotton Twill 1947 Design Dorothy Draper, Courtesy Schumacher & Co), 2007. C-print, 131,5 cm x 100,5 cm. Courtey: Johann König, Berlin.
Installation View Annette Kelm.
Installation View Annette Kelm.
Annette Kelm, from the series: Stars Look Back, 2006. C-print, 92,3 cm x 69 cm. Courtesy: Johann König, Berlin.
With poignant precision the artist tackles pictorial conventions using photographic means. She invokes the genre of the still life along with that of object and studio photography, with architectural and landscape images rounding out her comprehensive oeuvre. With a methodically stringent, formalised approach, high image definition, neutral lighting, and an “objective” camera angle, Annette Kelm leverages the subjects and objects of her photographs to a kind of a hyperpresence of the real, to a presence of the factual. Yet through subtle placement the subjects also appear ambivalent due to the manner in which they are combined: for the artist, possessing an acutely refined sense for formal congruities, positions very different objects together, or smuggles “alien” details into seemingly perspicuous motifs. The photographs, which appear temperate and elegant, thus acquire a measure of eccentricity and elude immediate interpretation – on the contrary, the motifs seem obscure. For instance, Annette Kelm places the first e-guitar, a 1934 Rickenbacker model “Frying Pan” (2007), in front of African wax batik fabric with an M.C. Escher-like staircase motif; in the series “Stars Look Back” (2006) she photographs a cubical bamboo table, each time slightly shifted, with shadowings in various directions, in front of graphically patterned cloth. The respectively different lighting of the motif along with the colourfully divergent composition seem to indicate a flawed photographic process that Kelm in this series doesn’t actually correct after the fact but instead openly exhibits, considering her own perfectionism, as effects of the analogue technique. Typical for her work are constructions of pictorial space that are easy to grasp visually but culminate aesthetically in a hybrid manner, a subtly directed objectual presence inherent therein, as well as the making-visible of the photographic process. Evident here is Kelm’s scrutinising and comparative reassessment of the promise of photography as a purportedly objectifying method of representation. Equally apparent, however, is her intention of qualifying photography as a proverbially imaging medium with its own logic. Thus Kelm’s images well-nigh defy, contrary to the initial impression, the classifications of photography and of its traditional scope of use as a documenting, staging, and analysing method of recording. On the contrary: it is a strict working with the image that is not possible without critically questioning conventional access to the medium and undermining the related ascription models.
Kelm’s penchant for the ornamental or the artistry of an object, sometimes even decor, is in some ways inconsistent with the reduced severity of the photographic technique, and yet is still calculated. For precisely this strict orientation toward formal criteria – such as, for instance, abstaining from having details in the surroundings take on a narrative function – and the selection of a purely object-related representational form serve to charge the motif with an almost affected presence. This strategy underlines the hybrid character of her pictures, which transcend purely factual perception and comprehension and oscillate at the margin of perception and knowledge. Kelm is hence at the same time criticising the classical attributions of photography as a technique of exposing and perceiving.
The exhibition in Graz is showing photographs and series from the past ten years. As such, it provides an overview of the wide range of Kelm’s works. Photographs from the artistic beginnings are presented alongside more recent productions. The exhibit selection in this show is thematically associated through a concentration on Kelm’s treatment of pictorial space. For not only is enigmatic motif selection characteristic for her photography – of central importance for her work is likewise the divesting of the pictorial space of its concept and context. In one of her earliest works, “Untitled (ref: leaf)” from the year 1998, she works with the imaging technique commonly used in advertising called the “pack shot” where objects and subjects are depicted without shadow in front of a neutral background. Already apparent here is the formalised austerity with which Annette Kelm would be repeatedly working in order to direct her subjects into a visual structure of isolation. In “Untitled (ref: chimney)” from the year 2001, in turn, she organises – through the photographic technique (flash) and through a mostly uniform colour scheme – the relationship between foreground and background vis-à-vis conventional hierarchies: the objectual presence virtually dissolves here so that the view completely obscures. Nothing else can be signified here and associated with its usual perceptual function; instead, a strongly suggestive effect develops. With this and with subsequently created, comparable works a visual strategy becomes evident that Kelm brings to a climax in her more recent works, such as in the “Big Prints”, which are photographs of generously patterned, opulent furnishing fabrics by the influential American interior designer Dorothy Draper. The pictorial space is reinterpreted as extreme planarity, and Kelm aligns it with the object of representation in one-to-one reproductions: the pictorial space therefore dissipates at the surface while it is, at the same time, just soberly portraying the object after all. Apparent here is Kelm’s systematic, almost radicalised objectivity with which she succeeds, in a totally new way, in circumventing the conventional logics of representation governing the photographic. In the process, photographs of powerful intensity emerge, burgeoning with almost psychedelic impact.
curated by Maren Lübbke-Tidow and Reinhard Braun
Christopher Williams, Bouquet, for Bas Jan Ader and Christopher D’Arcangelo, 1991. Archival corrugated board, archival photocorners, compound, 4-ply conservamat, 8-ply conservamat, drywall, dye transfer print, glass, lacquer-based finish, linen tape, nails, Northern maple, plastic set back strips, primer, screws, seaming tape, paint and wood. Print: 40,6 × 50,8 cm; 73,7 × 82,9 cm (framed); Wall: 304,8 × 457,2 × 12 cm; Overall: 304,8 × 457,2 × 17,2 cm.
Marine Hugonnier, Mountain with no name (Pandjshêr Valley, Afghanistan) VI, 2003.
Marine Hugonnier, Towards Tomorrow (International Dateline, Alaska) I, 2001. From the series: “Towards Tomorrow”, 2001 – 2003. Digital print on aluminium, 180 cm × 300 cm.
ambivalent relationship as explored through the current (follow-up) project. After all, the title “Then the work takes place” phrases the completion of Dan Graham’s sentence as stated in the context of deliberations on Sol LeWitt, which references the traditional narrative of historical conceptual art: the focus lies on the primacy of the idea vis-à-vis the work. Precisely this primacy of the idea vis-à-vis the work – of the conceivable and expressible vis-à-vis the sensible – forms the crux of the
explorative questioning by the exhibition “Then the work takes place”. The title (in accentuating the work) already signalises that the images take centre stage as specific aesthetic occurrence and manifestation, that they are not simply pursuing the idea but rather countering the language and the argument – that they are therefore occupying a space in which thought, perception, recognition, experience, and knowledge are brought into new interrelatedness.
Joachim Koester, The Abbey of Thelema I, aus der Serie: Morning of the Magicians, 2005.
Joachim Koester, The Room of Nightmares II, aus der Serie: Morning of the Magicians, 2005.
Jean-Luc Mylayne, Nº B2, novembre – décembre 2000 – janvier 2001. C-print, 153 × 123 cm.
Opening Performance Ein Ding mehr by Prinz Gholam, Camera Austria, Graz, 13.3.2008.
Aneta Grzeszykowska, Untitled Film Still #6, 2006.
Installation View Aneta Grzeszykowska / Prinz Gholam (Aneta Grzeszykowska).
Prinz Gholam, Die zwei Freunde, 2002.
Installation View Aneta Grzeszykowska / Prinz Gholam (Prinz Gholam).
with: John Armleder, Olaf Breuning, Swetlana Heger, Piotr Uklański, Nicole Wermers, Manfred Willmann
Camera Austria, Graz, 23.9. – 18.11.2007
curated by Christine Frisinghelli and Maren Lübbke-Tidow
In a refusal to become “productive”, they accumulate pure surface, appropriating those aesthetic phenomena that have become part of our (Western) cultural and consumerist domestication in everyday life. Their works arise from the object worlds of our designed-to-death environment: From meaningless fetishes that already exist, from the mass-produced goods of Western affluent societies, throw-aways obscenely manufactured in the sweatshops of low-wage countries. Rather, beyond a criticism of capitalism (which could also be a fruitful starting-point in this context), the artists are guided in their works by an ostensibly affirmative fascination with the never-ending stream of goods, mass and surface, and associated concepts such as beauty and fetish. However, by working the material in sharp-edged staged shifts, the artists lend a strange hyperpresence of reality to the (often meaningless) things and objects found in the everyday world and focused on in the works. In an attempt to come to terms, the image becomes a vehicle for metamorphoses and fetishisations of our everyday world, in a recourse to carnevalesque methods some of the exhibited works also oppose those economies of the body that strive to make the body “utilisable” for society and to normalise it, “closeness” is experienced as an excessive demand. What gestures are still possible?
Installation View What We Bought (back: John Armleder, front: Nicole Wermers), Camera Austria, Graz.
Installation View What We Bought (Piotr Uklánski), Camera Austria, Graz.
Camera Austria, Graz, 6.7. – 9.9.2007
curated by Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Wolfgang Tillmans, paper drop (rainbow), 2006.
From the beginning, Wolfgang Tillmans worked parallel in a wide range of media and institutional contexts. At the end of the 1980s, he published series of photos for (lifestyle) magazines, at the same time exhibiting in the gallery context, followed shortly afterwards by shows at international exhibition centres and numerous (artist’s) books and catalogues. These presentations in different media contexts are also interesting in connection with this: Here we see the essence of a profoundly human interest in understanding social experiences or details of reality, to find oneself in them, and to wish to find an image for them. On the other hand, however, we also see the essence of an artistic attitude towards constantly questioning and processing the possibilities and the status quo of art itself through his own work.
In his first solo exhibition in Austria, Wolfgang Tillmans also presents an ensemble of works composed for Camera Austria’s exhibition room that is in keeping with his artistic practice; the ensemble not only demonstrates the whole range of his pictorial themes and motifs but also visualises his interest in the photo as material (that may also be experienced haptically). One focus of the exhibition will be on this aspect in the form of the recent abstract works. Tillmans is interested in the physical processes and different methods that are fundamental in creating a surface structure or image structure: Particularly in his abstract (sometimes cameraless) photography, he thus underscores the materiality of his work and paper as an image carrier of visual perception. The different modes of presentation emphasise the material orientation and the objectual character of his recent works. In the recently created “paper drops”, he widens his focus to this aspect of his work: Here he explores (photo) paper as a cover, as a carrier medium that includes colour.
On the one hand, the experimental aspect that these works may convey represents a constant factor in Tillmans’ photographic work (that began with experiments with different forms of enlargement and reproduction), but must not be viewed as being reduced to this formal aspect. For experimenting with and repeatedly verifying what has been learnt presents itself as a fundamental paradigm of Wolfgang Tillmans’ artistic work: Allowing himself an ever changing approach to his own work and to art is the outstanding quality in this multilayered artistic project. It is an open oeuvre, characterised by constant work on the basis, beyond any grand theorems or finished statements, guided by a “strategy of doubt”. By means of his work, he engages in a form of constant questioning and (self) assurance in which he continues to re-negotiate social, political, religious or genderspecific realities. At the same time, he is also constantly examining the artistic devices, the photography medium itself, with regard to their possibilities, constantly questioning art itself and its possibilities. Although the work is so profoundly conceived as a kind of ongoing test procedure, both in itself and in its interplay with others, Tillmans often surprises by ultimately creating perfectly matched montages of his very different pictures and topics in three dimensions.
Wolfgang Tillmans, Chrysanthemum, 2006.
Wolfgang Tillmans, Gong, 2006.
Wolfgang Tillmans, suit, 1997.
Wolfgang Tillmans, plant life, 2005.
with : Marika Asatiani, Christoph Grill, Sylvia Henrich, Karina Nimmerfall, Sofija Silvia, Verena Winkelmann, Andrea Witzmann
Camera Austria, Graz, 10.3. – 1.5.2007
curated by Christine Frisinghelli and Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Verena Winkelmann, aus / from: Skien, 2003.
Karina Nimmerfall visits supposed crime scenes in New York that play a role in the popular US television series “Law and Order”; in “Cinematic Maps” she contrasts the real places with her fictitious allocations.
Rural scenes photographed in the Zemo Achara region, close to the Turkish border in Georgia, describe almost archetypal types of construction and life-styles, that Marika Asatiani has explored in her “Achara Untitled” project.
Residential buildings in a garden city and their inhabitants, photographed in Skien (Norway) by Verena Winkelmann: Stable, orderly small-town habits in the modern welfare state.
An artificial waterfall in Umbria, the theme of countless idyllic landscape pictures, gives Sylvia Henrich occasion for a project on the relationship of nature as an artificial creation, ideal projection surface, but also energy resource.
Andrea Witzmann presents living space as a variable construction kit with her works created at her Paris studio: In everchanging experimental set-ups, with the aid of the found furnishings, a kind of appropriation process takes place.
The method employed by SofijaSilvia could be described as a meandering movement through space: The photographer as an unnoticed observer, who doesn?t disturb the place she traverses in any way, occupying it only for a short time, and in whose field of vision everything visible enters into a temporary relationship.
Many of the projects presented here have already been published in Camera Austria magazine, that (above all for young artists) has become a trans-local platform beyond local scenes and borders.
Karina Nimmerfall, Cinematic Maps, 2004-2006. Photo: Manfred Willmann.
Karina Nimmerfall, aus / from: Cinematic Maps, 2004-2006.
Andrea Witzmann, aus der Serie / from the series: Compilation 6, 2004.
Sylvia Henrich, Wasserfall / täglich 12-13 Uhr und 16-17 Uhr (I,II,III).
Installation View You Are Here, Camera Austria, Graz. Photo: Manfred Willmann.
Rainer Oldendorf, Marco Gallo auf dem Balkon der Wohnung meiner Eltern / Marco Gallo on the balcony of my parents’ house, Lörrach, Frühjahr / spring 1977, Einladungskarte für / Invitaton card to “Marco 1”, Ausstellungsraum Thomas Taubert, Düsseldorf. Design: Gabriele Franziska Götz, 1995 (links / left); Riesstraße 1, Lörrach, Winter 1996/97, Farbvergrößerung nach Kleinbild-Diapositiv / colour blow-up from small picture slide, 2005. Courtesy Galerie Erna Hécey, Brüssel.
Against this backdrop of constant enactment of individuality, authenticity and identity, pictures are assuming a new role: instead of representation and appearance, the focus is now on circulation and performativity – a form of complicity between the subject and the picture is beginning to emerge in which it is no longer a matter of surveillance, control or discipline in the stricter sense, but rather of forms of appropriating conventions of representation and the exploitation of pictures in the course of constant (published) identity work.
The “knowing you, knowing me” exhibition explores current photographic positions with regard to this mechanism of a fundamental connection between picture and (social) subject, in which the contours of a specific role of pictures are evolving within general cultural-visual horizons. The artists featured at the exhibition assume previous pictorial knowledge of the recipients, deploying various forms of transfer of pictorial disositifs as a strategy of constructing meanings. In this process, they occupy photography in different ways as an “agent” of enacting reality, identity or lifestyle, thus involving photography as a kind of “accomplice” in the – ironical, critical or subversive – construction of realities in which knowledge of the constructedness and thus also the complicity of the viewer has always been inherent.
Mark Raidpere, still from: Shifting Focus, 2005. Video, 9 min. 30 sec.
G.R.A.M., from the series: Paparazzi, 1997 – 2006. Photo: Manfred Willmann.
Andrea Geyer / Sharon Hayes, In times like these only criminals remain silent, fünfteilige Posterserie / five-part poster series, 2005.
with Miles Coolidge, Ralf Hoedt, Joachim Koester, Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch, Peter Piller, Christine Würmell
Camera Austria, Graz, 8.7. – 10.9.2006
curated by Maren Lübbke-Tidow and Reinhard Braun
Nicole Six / Paul Petritsch, aus: Two by Four, 2004.
“First the artist defines meaning*” showcases artistic positions that are determined by a questioning of dispostifs of representation, representational conventions, paradigms of narration, reception and also politics. The artists break away from specific aesthetic allocations to ask about specific (also political and image-political) attitudes.
With different formal and media-specific strategies, they re-question and re-formulate specifically connotated spaces and places / architectures and culturally coded parameters of spaces / places in processes of re-photographing (Joachim Koester) and re-contextualising (Ralf Hoedt, Peter Piller), in processes of re-ordering partially historical material and associated framework data (Ralf Hoedt, Peter Piller, Christine Würmell), in models of measuring and transforming (Six & Petritsch) and breaking up (Miles Cooldige) space. This also demonstrates the wish for a geographical, institutional and political, economical change of paradigm.
The exhibition thus depicts a fundamental, ongoing occupation with those contemporary art productions that operate in a media-critical and in a political context with their work. Finally, the statement that it is first and foremost the artists who open up a space of meaning, also opens up a perspective on art that brings the theoretical potential of the works themselves into play, attempting to question the contexts of production and reception once again.
Installation View First the artist defines meaning (Joachim Koester). Photo: Manfred Willmann.
Installation View First the artist defines meaning (Christine Würmell). Photo: Manfred Willmann.
Installation View Fist the artist defines meaning (Miles Coolidge). Photo: Manfred Willmann.
Installation View First the artist defines meaning (Nicole Six / Paul Petritsch). Photo: Manfred Willmann.
Installation View First the artist defines meaning (Ralf Hoedt). Photo: Manfred Willmann.
Installation View First the artist defines meaning (Ralf Hoedt). Photo: Manfred Willmann.
Installation View First the artist defines meaning (Peter Piller). Photo: Manfred Willmann.
mit Kaucylia Brooke, Miles Coolidge, William Eggleston, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Gerald van der Kaap, Werner Kaligofsky, Masafumi Sanai, Michael Schuster, Ingrid Simon, Lois and / und Franziska Weinberger, Hans Schabus, Manfred Willmann
Österreichisches Kulturforum Prag, 16.12.2004 – 14.2.2005
curated by Christine Frisinghelli and Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Kaucylia Brooke, The Flame, San Diego, 1996. From the series: The Boy Mechanic / San Diego, 2004.
Ulrike Lienbacher, Pin Up Übungen / Pin Up Exercises, 2001. Offsetdruck auf Büttenpapier / offset print on handmade paper. Courtesy: Galerie Krinzinger, Wien / Vienna.
Ulrike Lienbacher, aus der Serie: 10 + 10 Photographien, 2000.Ulrike Lienbacher, aus der Serie: 10 + 10 Photographien, 2000. Courtesy: Galerie Krinzinger, Wien / Vienna.
Ulrike Lienbacher, aus der Serie: 10 + 10 Photographien, 2000.Ulrike Lienbacher, aus der Serie: 10 + 10 Photographien, 2000. Courtesy: Galerie Krinzinger, Wien / Vienna.
Ulrike Lienbacher, aus der Serie: 10 + 10 Photographien, 2000.Ulrike Lienbacher, aus der Serie: 10 + 10 Photographien, 2000. Courtesy: Galerie Krinzinger, Wien / Vienna.Camera Austria, Graz, 10.3. – 11.4.2003.
curated by Christine Frisinghelli and Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Tatiana Lecomte, aus: Le Cabanes # 1 – 10, 2000.
Tatiana Lecomte, Nacht, 2001.
Allan Sekula, from the series: Waiting For Teargas [white globe to black], 1999/2000.
One fleeting hallucination could not be photographed. As the blast of stun grenades reverberated amidst the downtown skyscrapers, someone with a boom box thoughtfully provided a musical accompaniment: Jimi Hendrix?s mock-hysterical rendition of the American national anthem. At that moment, Hendrix returned to the streets of Seattle, slyly caricaturing the pumped-up sovereignty of the world?s only superpower.
Camera Austria, Graz, 3.9. – 17.9.1999
curated by Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Hans Schabus, Anton, 1999. Filmstill, 7min43sek, Super 8 transfer auf DVD.
Hans Schabus, Links Vorne und Rechts Hinten, 1999. C-Prints auf Aluminium, je 37 x 50cm.
mit Vlasta Delimar, Hubbard Birchler, Friedl Kubelka, Lois Renner, Joke Robaard, Ed Ruscha, Wolfgang Tillmans, Franz West
Camera Austria, Graz, 17.4. – 17.5.1999
curated by Maren Lübbke-Tidow und Manfred Willmann
Friedl Kubelka, Porträt Louise Anna Kubelka, 1978 – 1996.
