19/11/2014
Kruger & Pardeller
21er Haus, Wien
Homo faber. A Spatial Audio Play in Three Parts. In an extensive installation, the artist duo addresses and compares the discrepancy between two views of art. They examine what sculpture means today and how we deal with it.
The exhibition HOMO FABER by Doris Krüger and Walter Pardeller, showing from 20 November 2014 to 26 April 2015, takes art production in general as its subject. In an extensive installation, the artist duo addresses and compares the discrepancy between two views of art. On the one hand, this is the idea of art as a storyline, continuously producing meaning, and on the other the idea of art forming an aesthetically legible finished product. Doris Krüger and Walter Pardeller examine what sculpture means today and how, as viewers and as an institution, we deal with it. The production of sculpture poses questions about the autonomy and significance of form as well as the productive environment at the time of its exhibition. In this particular case, the bringing together of form, context, and spatial experience occurs against the background of Fritz Wotruba’s work (1907–1975). Krüger&Pardeller juxtapose their own view of art as an act of critical production with the sculptor’s approach. Wotruba’s notion of art production as a “moral principle,” as “resistance,” is addressed both in an audio play with historical sound documents and in a musical composition created especially for the installation.
In the 1950s debate focused on the extent to which a sculpture can be autonomous, in other words can be an entity in itself. The issue of the surroundings became increasingly essential, and artists began realizing their work in large, space-consuming installational forms. The crisis in classic sculpture at that time led to environment and installation art.
For the 21er Haus, Krüger&Pardeller have taken historical photographs and recordings about Fritz Wotruba’s work and transformed these into an installation, including audio elements, through which the visitor can wander. The studio wall, an obvious spatial context during production, becomes the central element. Together with the original historical recordings, which are combined as a type of three-dimensional audio play and relocated within the space, a place of reflection unfurls about the construed artist image of yesterday and today. The language of the time, the art of others, the studio wall: Krüger&Pardeller highlight the hidden, the mundane, the coincidental. The material used to weave the historical narrative about Wotruba also reveals the immaterial substrate of their own production.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES Krüger&Pardeller
Doris Krüger (b. Vienna) and Walter Pardeller (b. Bolzano) both live and work in Vienna; they have been working together since 2004.
Social attitudes are manifested in form and aesthetic. Artistic practice is part of a more general aesthetic production. Krüger&Pardeller examine how social interaction has an impact on physical space and, conversely, how far spatial concepts and objects shape social constellations. The interaction between the internal emotional system and the external communicative network comes into effect in the use of their objects. Krüger&Pardeller understand their installations as platforms where subjective and social attitudes about form and aesthetics – and subsequently the associated models of our coexistence – can be negotiated. The cause and effect of social processes are condensed into form; the objects by Krüger&Pardeller are filters and catalysts of this reflection.
Press contact:
Tina Bayer T +43 1 79557-177 F +43 1 79557-250 T.Bayer@belvedere.at
Claudia Bauer T +43 1 79557-185 Fax +43 1 79557-250 E-mail C.Bauer@belvedere.at
21er Haus
Schweizergarten, Arsenalstraße 1, 1030 Vienna
Wednesday and Thursday 11 am to 9 pm
Friday to Sunday 11 am to 6 pm
Open on holidays
Admission € 7
Seniors (60 years and above) € 5.50
Students (0-26 years) € 5.50
Groups (of 10 Persons and over) € 5.50
Children & teenager (0-18 years) free