| PRESSINFORMATION Dec 07, 2001
8 December 2001-
7 February 2002 O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Linz
The exhibition focuses on the dynamic character of contemporary works of art, which interlink various components and whose mutual association, closeness or involvement give rise to something new. Many of the presented
works are based on an incalculable moment of chance. While this is certainly
the intention of most of the artists, it is not something that can be
controlled. It is evident not only in the significance of external influences
on the final artwork, whether Visitors are offered
a glimpse into a world full of contradictions: Sixteen international
artists from three generations are gathered here. In addition to such
classical media as drawing, photography and sculpture, they also show
media installations, video works and performances. Sven Augustijnen, Manon de Boer, Pierre Bismuth, Gerhard Dirmoser, Dan Graham, Margarete Jahrmann/Max Moswitzer, Daniela Keiser, Dieter Kiessling, Ken Lum, Matt Mullican, Boris Rebetez, Daniel Roth, Simon Starling, Mitja Tusek, Keith Tyson, Peter Zimmermann
The catalogue: Cooperation Partner The Casino Luxembourg
- Forum d'art contemporain is comparable with the O.K both in program
and in its framework conditions. Similarly to a state art gallery, it
puts on exhibitions of contemporary art throughout the year. The thirteen
rooms of the remodeled historical building are used dynamically, so
that various exhibition projects can take place imultaneously. They
are supplemented by a diversified accompanying program ranging from
general and thematic tours, conferences and discussions, to encounters
with contemporary music.
Erika, Guido,
Johan, Rudi..., 2001 The film "Erika,
Guido, Johan, Rudi ..." produced by Sven Augustijnen for the exhibition
reveals dynamic aspects of language. As a filmmaker, Augustijnen has
repeatedly investigated the gray area between docu-drama, human interest
and fiction. He stylized his recent films such as "Iets op Bach"
(1998, BetacamSP, 37', based on the play of the same name by the Belgian
director Alain Platel on Les Ballets C. de la B.) or "L'école
des pickpockets" (2000, video, 50', based on the invented fact
of a training center for pickpockets) in such a way that it was no longer
possible to distinguish between documentary film, voyeuristic home movie,
fact and fiction. In his film produced for the exhibition "The
Larsen Effect", the artist approaches the narrative aspect at a
more conceptual level. Sven Augustijnen (°1970/B, Mechelen)
Alternance, 1999
In the same way,
continuity and discontinuity are a central theme in the video work "Link",
but here everything seems to be accelerated. As his point of departure
and basic material, the artist uses the classic film "Sleuth"
by Joseph L. Mankiewicz from 1972 (with Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier).
Production partners are being sought for the "remake" - the
existing film is filmed again - who will each "produce" 170
seconds of the film with an original length of 138 minutes. Each separate
take of the original film is then re-filmed scene by scene on continuously
alternating television screens in continuously alternating private homes,
until the original film is finished. This work thus shows a chronological
sequencing of all the takes in different interiors. Both works introduce
a double dramaturgy, which paraphrases the location of the action and
slows down or accelerates the perception of it. Pierre Bismuth (°1963/F, Meudon)
Mind Mapping The exhibition version of Manon de Boer´s work "Mind Mapping" (2001) is shown for the first time. The work was originally conceived for the Flemish Library in Brussels and integrated there as a permanent part of the internal visitors' information system. Manon de Boer asked
thirty people - partly friends, partly unknown users - to compile a
top ten list of their favorite books, CD's and videos and to describe
themselves briefly (e.g. as transparent woman, library Casanova, bum,
etc.). Manon De Boer (°1966/NL, Kodaicanal, India)
Denken - Ein
Netzwerk, 1996-2001 Gerhard Dirmoser
is a computer scientist and does not regard himself as an artist in
a strict sense. Gerhard Dirmoser (°1958 / A, Linz)
Yesterday/Today,
1975 Even the early works
by Dan Graham, who has been a gallerist, critic, photographer, performer,
video artist, artist-architect and artist-historian one after another,
examined socio-psychological processes of interaction: in 1969 using
performance, in 1970 with a video camera and monitor, and beginning
in 1974 with video installations, in which he questioned the concepts
of identity, subjectivity and objectivity. Dan Graham (°1942/USA,
Urbana, Illinois)
Margarete Jahrmann & Max Moswitzer Objectiles -
http://www.climax.at,
2001, The "objectile"
is a tactile object distilled from the data mass of the net. It transforms
abstract information into a three-dimensional shape. This "stone-like
structure" is a 3D print of the data architecture, an equivalent
to the currently running program. It thus translates a feedback process
to the screen. Margarete Jahrmann
(°1967 / A, Oberwart)
Felloni &
Buonvicini, 1999 The extent, to which
concepts in language may be stretched or differently interpreted, is
shown in the work "Felloni & Buonvicini" by Daniela Keiser. Daniela Keiser (°1963/CH, Neuhausen am Rheinfall)
ohne Titel /
untitled, 1997
Dieter Kiessling (°1957/D, Münster)
Mirror Works,
1998 Ken Lum presents the mirror to us not only as an object, but also as a metaphor for spatial reflection. By hanging several "Mirror Works" (1998) in a relationship of mutual correspondence, he examines the picture space with the simple accent of the wooden frame, yet at the same time, he also addresses the surrounding space that expands endlessly in manifold branches. "The mirror is an utopia as much as it is a place without a place. In the mirror I see myself where I am not: in an unreal space which appears virtually behind the surface; I am there where I am not, a kind of shadow that endows me with my own visibility, shows me where I am absent. But the mirror sends me back to the place I am actually occupying; from the mirror I discover myself to be absent in the place where I am, as I see myself there". The anonymous family
photos that the artist has stuck into the wooden frames, create another
level of meaning that hangs like a narrative veil between space and
mirrored space. One's own counterpart (the other me in the mirror) becomes
entangled in the sentimental surroundings of "strangers'"
snapshots. Reality and fiction, layers and stories, foreground and background
merge into one another. Ken Lum (°1956 / Can, Vancouver)
Psycho Architecture:
Experiments in the Studio November 5th - 7th 2001 Untitled - Bulletin
Board of Vintage Photographs, 1971-2001 Untitled - Bulletin
Board of Working Database Material, 1995 The hypnosis performances
"Psycho Architecture: Experiments in the Studio November 5th -
7th 2001, 2001" by Matt Mullican, which have been produced for
the exhibition and are presented as video recordings and on monitors,
deal with the subjective construction of the world. Unlike his first
hypnosis performances in the early 70's ("Drawing the Outline of
My Family", 1973, CalArts, Valencia, California / "Untitled
(Entering the Picture)", 1973, Project Inc. in Boston / or the
more recent one "Pattern / Spa / Lecture", 1998, Festival
a/d Werf, Utrecht), here the artist refers to media (television, light,
music, literature) for the first time, in order to mark out a field
of references of different influences on reality. Matt Mullican
(°1951/USA, Santa Monica, Californien)
ohne Titel /
untitled, 1998 Boris Rebetez' photographs
are based on a very simple collage technique. He takes pictures of landscapes
from various magazines, cuts them up, mounts them, photographs and finally
enlarges them. This results in a sampling of impressions suggesting
a plausible new reality. Foreground and background, lighting, shadows
and objects are only apparently flowing, until one recognizes the few
brutal but virtuosic cuts in the picture. The artist works with small
and precise gestures. The individual landscapes retain their "autonomy",
because they are not interlocked, but rather layered consecutively and
horizontally. A logical perspectival sequence is undermined in this
way. A post in the foreground of a picture becomes, in contrast with
a meadow landscape, monumentalized, or a street is miniaturized directly
adjacent to a rooftop landscape. Since the autonomous plateaus are next
to one another in an optically harmonious co-existence, the sum of the
fragments is read as a unit. This reveals a process of optical feedback,
in that the different interpretations of the part and the whole, the
integral part and the separable whole, can no longer be distinguished. Boris Rebetez (°1970/CH, Lacoix)
Untitled (Mansfeld Connection), work in progress, 2001-2002 The work "Untitled
(Mansfeld Connection)" (2001-2002) visualizes a processual and
geographically situated narrative. The presented work
originated with the exhibition at the Casino Luxembourg "Sous les
Ponts, lelong de la Rivière" (June 2001) and deals with
the vanished castle "La Fontaine" of Baron Pierre-Ernest de
Mansfeld. In 1604 he bequeathed his property including the archives
to the Spanish king, who let it fall into ruins. Because of the desolate
state of the residence, the archive vanished and the castle walls were
demolished to build an alley, which is still named after the Baron today.
Daniel Roth (°1962/D,
Schramberg)
Blue Boat Black
"Re-locating" and contextualizing are the theme of Simon Starling's work. The title of the exhibited work "Blue Boat Black" (1997) already indicates an altered status, a transformation, indeed even a destiny. The extensive subtitle enlightens the view! A confrontation
with charred relics spread out on a large table reveals the absurd procedure
of transforming a Scottish museum showcase into a French fishing boat
and then into an open fireplace. It is not so much the transformation
as it is the return of this "performative" work into the institutional
context that leads to the actual feedback. While the original purpose
of the museum showcase was to display and protect cultural assets, it
returns to the museum by roundabout ways and thus becomes itself a cult
object and a carrier of meaning. On the one hand, feedback here shows
itself from its most destructive side as an entropic phenomenon by dissolving
the work, so to speak. On the other hand, though, it is also very optimistic
and full of vitality in the final promotion to an art object. Simon Starling (°1967/GB, Epsom)
Frühstück
(exhibition version), 1999-2001 Mitja Tusek is primarily
a painter. For this reason, the exhibited audio work "Frühstück"
["Breakfast] is less representative for his work than for his fine
sense of humor. The theme "feedback" is revealed here most
of all in the interpretive reaction of the audience to the audio work,
which can be heard permanently for the duration of the two exhibitions
in Linz and in Luxembourg on a leased frequency through transistor radios.
The point of departure is a sampling of popular sayings, such as "One
man's success is another man's downfall ... Better in debt than in disgrace
... Better healthy and poor, than rich and sick ...", etc. Over
the course of this five-minute enumeration, the speaker reinterprets
and twists the moralizing statements in such a way that playing with
the serious side of life becomes seriously playing with life: "But:
the meat is not better with more soup ... Opportunity makes millionaires
... Those who have nothing to fear, have nothing to hide ... Man thinks
and God laughs ...", etc. The combination of the sober voice trying
to make the implausible sound plausible, together with the breathless
timing that takes our reflex-like uncertainty about what we have heard
by surprise, reinforces the dissolution of morality. The destructive
moment of the Larsen Effect comes in like a sheep in wolf's clothing.
It is a play between belief and truth, assumption and fact, which cancel
each other out. Mitja Tusek (°1961/CH, Maribor, Slovenia)
Recursive CPK
Gameboard no.1 (Central Processing Knot), 2001 What distinguishes
Keith Tyson's work "Recursive CPK Gameboard no. 1 (Central Processing
Knot) (2001), co-produced for this exhibition, is that it knows no fixed
and final form. Keith Tyson (°1969/GB, Ulverston, Cumbria)
Retrospective
Boxes, 1993-2001 "Our environment
presents itself as an installation of real objects, onto which constantly
new surfaces are projected. (...) The need to pin down thoughts thus
produces an inside and an outside in a simple manner, a casing and contents.
The central perspective illustrates this for the audience. It is a box
that permits the fiction of an ordered world. The transformation of
this process in the material world generates space. The simplest way
to produce space is a box. Houses are boxes that are divided again into
various sub-boxes like rooms, cupboards, drawers and books. In addition
to the square-shaped ones, there are also irregular, soft boxes like
bottles, backpacks and pockets, or movable ones like cars, airplanes,
trains, etc. (...) In addition to its protective function, the casing
also has a capability for communication. Most of the time, the labeling
goes beyond a mere specification of the content. It refers to the concept
of social or psychological representation, which is first guaranteed
by the objectness of the things. (...) Television and computer are modern
variations of this box schema. They offer the advantage of a view to
the outside/inside and ensure the contact to other units. (...) The
border between the starting material and its imitation is blurring more
and more (...)" This is simply a text segment from one of the six
presented "Boxes" by Peter Zimmermann, which together form
a new "retrospective body of thought". Here the boxes (packaging,
container, means of transport, meta-space) are a metaphor for communication
per se, oscillating a multiple feedback as a monumental block: as imitations
of existing packages, as text collages from different sources (books,
newspapers, catalogues), as spaces forcing the viewer to new stances,
as a context-reflecting context work, as echo and reference to Andy
Warhol's monumental work "Big Retrospective Painting" from
1979, which itself reflects various themes within Warhol's oeuvre (Flowers
(1964), Kellogg's Corn Flakes Box (1964), Marilyn (1967), Car Crash
(1963), Cow Wallpaper (1966), Mao (1972), Campbell's Soup Can (1962),
Early Electric Chair (1963), Self-Portraits (1964)). Peter Zimmermann (°1956/D, Freiburg) |