Andro Wekua
dal 16/2/2011 al 4/6/2011
Segnalato da
16/2/2011
Andro Wekua
Kunsthalle Wien, Wien
Whether object, landscape, figure or portrait, the hyperreal beauty and absurdity of Wekua's works, their detachment from the world and their self referentiality unfold in an interplay between closeness and distance, intimacy and desire. The artist's pictorial solutions are fuelled by everyday impressions and personal recollections which often focus on his childhood in the city of Sukhumi on the Black Sea in Georgia, where Wekua was born.
Curated by Angela Stief
The intensity and variety of my feeling are so strong that I have to do something with it because it kind of splits me
apart.
Andro Wekua
Never Sleep with a Strawberry in Your Mouth is the title of Andro Wekua’s latest film finished for the present
exhibition. The surreal title, which does hardly make sense as an instruction, astounds us with a nonsensical logic
which is characteristic of the seductive power of symbolic art. Whether object, landscape, figure or portrait, the
hyperreal beauty and absurdity of Andro Wekua’s works, their detachment from the world and their self referentiality
unfold in an interplay between closeness and distance, intimacy and desire. The artist’s pictorial solutions are fuelled
by everyday impressions and personal recollections which often focus on his childhood in the city of Sukhumi on the
Black Sea in Georgia, where Wekua was born.
Anxious to see his works precisely executed in craft terms and developing an artistic practice taking its inspiration
from the structure of palimpsests, the master collagist uses nearly every medium: the concord of space, sculpture,
film, and two dimensional works guarantees an artistic impact whose expressive sublime pathos is balanced out
with elements of poetic self irony. Wekua’s art goes beyond the work in its three dimensional setting by
interweaving individual pieces to a gesamtkunstwerk’s larger contexts of meaning that leave the White Cube behind
and make room for enigmatic atmospheres. In conjunction with large projections and darkened rooms, emotionally
impressive arrangements, stage constructions, and a space within a space provide the starting point for a sensual
art and its theatrical mise en scène. Andro Wekua’s work does comprise narrative impulses. Yet, in order to
stimulate the viewers’ fantasies and associations, the artist deliberately confronts them with caesuras and does
without a narrative flow. Again and again whims erupt both in the gesture and the terror of introspection: “Of course
it doesn’t have to do with real violence – more with an atmosphere of violence, a threat, an oppressive atmosphere,”
says the artist.
Wekua furnishes his three dimensional structures with individual auratic figures, mostly life size young women made
of wax that sprawl on shining chromium plated motorcycles like in My Bike and Your Swamp 6 pm and, in their
androgyny, resemble mannequins. His figures are oblivious to the world and have no eyes because the artist does
not want them to return the visitor’s gaze, as he says. Endowed with a mannerist disposition and stoic calm, they
live in a time of delay. Waiting with no end in sight, they breathe a somnambulistic security characteristic of
melancholy. They have nothing to lose since they are not threatened by finiteness. With their ambiguous gestures
and stereotyped poses, they are subject to a rhythm of attraction and repulsion, perfection and obsession and
unfold an “anatomy of desire” that is sometimes reminiscent of works by Hans Bellmer and Medardo Rosso.
Wekua’s frequently oppressive reflections on the beautiful body hint at Classicist implications, yet the artist pitilessly
examines historical formulae of sculpture regarding their present suitability, sidesteps them, or installs placeholders
for interpretation and resonance.
Biographic details
Andro Wekua was born in 1977; he studied in Georgia and Switzerland (Basel). He has lived and worked in Berlin
and Zurich since 2007. Selected solo exhibitions: 2010 Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin / Gladstone Gallery, Brussels. 2009
Wiels, Brussels / Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich / Museion, Bolzano. 2008 Camden Art Center, London / Le
Magasin CNAC, Grenoble. 2007 Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam. 2006 Kunstmuseum Winterthur.
Selected group exhibitions: 2010 8th Gwangju Biennale / New Museum, New York / Carnegie Museum of Art,
Pittsburgh. 2009 Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo / CAC, Vilnius. 2008 Kunsthaus Zürich. 2006 Centre Pompidou,
Paris / 4th Berlin Biennale, Berlin.
Publication
A three part publication will be forthcoming on the occasion of the exhibition. Edited by Kunsthalle Wien, Kunsthalle
Fridericianum in Kassel, and Castello di Rivoli, Torino. With texts by Douglas Fogle and Miciah Hussey.
German/English/Italian.
Publishers: Walther König
Contact KATHARINA MURSCHETZ
+43-1-52189-1221
presse@kunsthallenwien.at
Press conference: Thursday, February 17, 2011, 10 a.m.
Opening: Thursday, February 17, 2011, 7 p.m.
Kunsthalle Wien
Museumsplatz 1, Vienna
Daily 10 a.m. – 7 p.m., Thur 10 a.m. – 9 p.m.