calendario eventi  :: 

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26/11/2003

Two exhibitions

Wiener Secession, Wien

MONICA BONVICINI / SAM DURANT
Break it / Fix it
28. Nov. 2003 - 1. Feb. 2004
Main Hall

The exhibition Break it / Fix it is the first collaboration between Monica Bonvicini and Sam Durant and reflects the interest in architecture and art that they have shared since they met in 1991. In her video works Monica Bonvicini investigates gender relations and the power parameters of architecture at the political, social and historical level. Sam Durant deals with popular culture, particularly emphasizing the historical reception of architecture in his works.

Both artists share an interest in demystifying modernism. Their works stimulate critical reflexion by using language and other means. The works 7 signs by Sam Durant and the installation I believe in the skin of things as in that of women by Monica Bonvicini, for example, form the basis for their collaborative work. What they have in common is especially evident in their paper works, taking up and reproducing images and quotations from various literary and cultural sources. The theme of destruction illustrating the vulnerability of existing structures characterizes the work of both artists.

Their work Break it / Fix it for the Secession is an architectonic intervention in space consisting of various building materials. Instead of an open space, visitors enter an installation of wood, metal and glass. Starting from the reflection that the Secession is historically the first white cube in the history of exhibitions, the artists counter the original exhibition space with a spatial construction consisting of the word CAGE. The installation is based on two aphorisms from Ludwig Wittgenstein: "Running full tilt against the limits of language? Language is not a cage." "This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless."

Monica Bonvicini and Sam Durant take up the metaphorical positioning of language in relation to spatial constructions and to the experience of boundaries and the hermetical, translating this into an installation. With their installation they limit the visitor's view and guide it through the architecture with a few permeable places at the same time.

Break It Fix It is a closed corridor- system that visitors cannot step out of, although it allows repeatedly for looking out and looking through: sometimes upwards to the grid-like structure of the glass ceiling, sometimes towards the walls that are partially manipulated and perforated. In four places the corridors lead into rectangular glass cubes, which are also opened upward. These cubes consist of discarded panes of glass that were previously used for the glass ceiling of the main room. In the video Break it / Fix it that is situated within the installation, the artists address language as an object. "The tautological game is humorously revealed: a sculpture depicting the word ANGST is shattered and rebuilt into a new sculpture." (M.D. and S.D.)

In the combination of the view of a sculpture from the inside (installation) and outside (in the video), Bonvicini and Durant address the relationship between sculpture and movement. At the same time, though, this arrangement also illustrates playing with the concept of work in visual art, which is actually coupled with manageability.

PUBLICATION
A text anthology is published for the exhibition, which not only functions as a catalogue, but also assembles various essays and poems by authors that are important to the artists for their manner of working. Texts by: Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt, Jennifer Gonzalez, Hou Hanru, Jörg Heiser, Leslie Kanes Weisman, Chris Kraus, John Miller/Frank Lutz/John Sinclair, Roberto Ohrt, Patrizia Valduga, Kevin Young.

MONICA BONVICINI, born 1965 in Venedig, lives and works in Berlin
Solo Exhibitions (Selection): 2003 Anxiety Attack, Modern Art Oxford; Shotgun, Tramway, Glasgow; 2002 Monica Bonvicini, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Add elegance to your poverty, Anton Kern Gallery, New York; 2001 Damaged, Galerie Krobath Wimmer, Vienna; Stonewall, Chouakri Brahms Berlin; Scream & Shake, Le Magasin, Grenoble; Eternmale, Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan / Group Exhibitions (Selection): 2003 Living Inside the Grid, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Bewitched, bothered and bewildered, migros museum, Zurich / Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdansk; Somewhere Better Than This Place: Alternative Social Experience in the Spaces of Contemporary Art, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; 8. Istanbul Biennale; 2002 Out of Place: Contemporary Art and the Architectural Uncanny, MCA, Chicago / Samuel P. Harn Museum, University of Florida; Public Affairs, Kunsthaus Zurich; 2001 Angst, Ursula Blicke Stiftung, Kraichtal / Grazer Kunstverein; Quobo, Waikato Museum of Art and History, Hamilton, NZ / Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin / Museum National Jakarta

SAM DURANT, born 1961 in Seattle, lives and works in Los Angeles
Solo Exhibitions (Selection): 2003 Upside Down: Pastoral Scene, Union Projects, London; Sam Durant, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Dusseldorf; 2002 Sam Durant, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Color Pictures, Blum & Poe, Santa Monica; 2002 Sam Durant: Matrix 147: 7 Signs; removed, cropped, enlarged and illuminated (plus index), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; 2001Southern Tree, Tree of Knowledge, Dead Tree (part one), Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan / Group Exhibitions (Selection): 2003 Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art, Seattle Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Vancouver Art Gallery; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; Somewhere Better Than This Place: Alternative Social Experience in the Spaces of Contemporary Art, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Dreams and Conflicts, Biennale Venedig; 2002 A Country Lane, Kerstin Engholm Galerie, Vienna; Out of Place: Contemporary Art and the Architectural Uncanny, MCA, Chicago / Samuel P. Harn Museum, University of Florida; From the Observatory, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

Image:
Monica Bonvicini/ Sam Durant, Break it / Fix it
__________

JOKE ROBAARD
Stand-In
28. Nov. 2003 - 1. Feb. 2004
Gallery, Grafisches Kabinett

In her photagraphies and folders Joke Robaard treats the concepts of presentation and representation, their differentiation from one another and dissolution into one another. In various economic, cultural and social contexts, she investigates how groups and networks form. At the same time, the rules and roles originally attributed to the individuals by an institution are rescinded. The poses that Robaard assigns to the representants in her photographies draw the gaze instead to the connection of appearance and the representation of ideas and ideologies. In addition, art historical references to picture genres - such as the group portrait - are repeatedly incorporated.

For the Secession Joke Robaard has developed a new project, Stand-In, which depicts the evolved network of the artists association and its exhibition house using various media - photography, video and a folder.

For a series of staged group pictures, the Secession chose (with the 'help' of the diagram) seven representative persons from the Secession and three companies that regularly work together with the Secession, and photographed them on site. Whereas the characteristic environment, the empty exhibition hall and the reception halls and working spaces clearly refer to the everyday self-understanding and corporate identity of the companies, the photos resist the traditional language of representation through the form in which the people are staged. The arrangement of the people is based on a photo that Joke Robaard took about twenty years ago with a group of friends and now repeats and varies in individual settings.

In her selection of people to be photographed, Joke Robaard followed a pattern that is typical for her: from a list of all employees compiled by the companies, she selected two persons from the beginning, two from the end and three from the middle of the list. Similar to a colophon, the diagrams developed from this measure the positions of the participants within the network. They are depicted in a folder together with the photographs. With this Folder #43 Robaard continues a working method she has practiced for many years. From an interest in making use of her own artistic practice to establish dialogues and networks, she develops small-format folders that provide a summary of her work in always the same format as take-away objects.

As though to reveal and expose the photographic, what is seemingly eventful about the frozen moment, Robaard shows what happens on the set in a video. The general gesture of representation is thus, in a sense, reverted back to the group of individuals themselves. The process of how the individual participants find the pose assigned to them also reveals the discrepancy between an assumed attitude or role and a different, personal self-understanding.

In addition to the project Stand-In, a selection of other folders, video documentations and trailers of older projects is also on display. An essential characteristic of the videos is that Robaard operates here with a certain concept of work that is based on the idea of the active picture archive and repeatedly allows for new versions adapted to each current presentation and exhibition form. The conjoining theme of (self-) presentation, body language and the forming of a group is also mirrored in the exhibition design. The stools designed in collaboration with Arno von der Mark for watching the films not only predetermine a certain posture, but can also be pushed together and formed into new arrangements again and again. At the intersection of art, architecture, fashion and design, Robaard thus stages complex panoramas, in which the various discourses are juxtaposed as elements of equal value.

exhibition design: DRFTWD OFFICE ASSOCIATES (design team: Arno van der Mark, Tsugumi Kanno, Gilbert Koskamp).
video-editing and camera: Maarten Theuwkens
diagrams and folder: Barbara Hermann
research: Martine van Kampen.

Parallel to the exhibition, an extensive documentation of Joke Robaard's projects since 1988 is published by Valiz, Amsterdam.

JOKE ROBAARD, born 1953, lives and works in Amsterdam
Exhibitions (selected): 2002 S(T)OCK, Casco, Utrecht, with students of Gerrit Rietveld Academie; 2001 No Hortus is conclusus, Marres Centrum beeldende Kunst, Maastricht; 2000 Fotobiennale Rotterdam; Revisiting the Readymade, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin; 1999 Cut-off Suit, 20er Haus, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Vienna; DEFILE, Festival a/d Werf Utrecht; 1996 White Suit, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Wet Suit, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Press discussion: Thursday, 27 Nov 2003, 11:00 a.m.
Opening: Thursday, 27 Nov 2003, 7:00 p.m.
28. Nov. 2003 - 1. Feb. 2004

OPENING HOURS
Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. / Thursday 10.am. - 8 p.m.

GUIDED TOURS
Saturdays at 3 p.m. and Sundays at 11 a.m.

Wiener Secession, Association of Visual Artists
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34

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