calendario eventi  :: 

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22/11/2006

Three exhibitions

Wiener Secession, Wien

STAN DOUGLAS
KLATSASSIN

Hauptraum

The Canadian artist Stan Douglas, whose works have been shown at prestigious international art institutions such as Documenta and the Venice Biennial since the mid-1980s, is known for his highly complex and technically perfect film and video works which continually extend the possibilities of the medium in order to construct non-linear narratives and astonishing modalities of time. The conceptual and formal precision of Douglas’s films is also characteristic of his photographs.

Klatsassin, the name of a Tsilhqot’in chief, is the title of Stan Douglas’s latest film, which will be shown in full for the first time at the Secession. Set in the nineteenth century in the forests of Canada’s Cariboo Mountains, the plot begins immediately after the historical events involving hostilities between the area’s native inhabitants and settlers. At the time, the discovery of gold was attracting people from a variety of places to the region.

Klatsassin refers to Akira Kurosawa’s legendary film Rashomon (1950), famous for its multiple, contradictory portrayals of a murder. In Douglas’s high-definition video, too, various individuals describe the same scene from their own point of view - a man is found dead on a deserted path in the forest - until it is impossible to know what has actually happened. Different threads of plot and time, changes of perspective, flashbacks and insertions turn an otherwise quite simple plot into a dense, many-layered whole which can never be totally grasped - not least because of the seemingly endless combinatory possibilities for combining sequences of scenes, which only start to repeat themselves after six days. The variations of interlaced plots develop like composed music - similarly animated by repetitions and motifs - which is why Douglas also refers to the film as a “Dub Western."

Who saw what when? How sure can one be of what one has seen, of remembered images that change with time? How to assess the credibility of reports by others? Klatsassin is about the impossibility of distilling truth or objectivity from images, language, and music, underlining the constructed and fragmentary nature of all experience and identity.

In the side aisles of the Hauptraum, two series of photographs by Stan Douglas will be shown that are closely connected with the film but which constitute groups of works in their own right. The first shows deserted but obviously inhabited landscapes and pictures of interiors in British Columbia. The photographs, some of which approach the format of a cinema screen, do not offer a general view of Canada’s wide open landscape - they describe specific places that can be found on the map: Maritime Worker's Hall, Vancouver, McLeod's Books, Quesnel Forks, Stanley Cemetery, Barkerville, Mason's Lodge, Spences Bridge, Walhachin. The second series comprises portraits of the figures from Klatsassin in black and white against an empty background. Here, too, in spite of the detailed, apparently objective reproduction, many questions remain unanswered: Who is being represented? The film characters, individual personalities, or actors in a film by Stan Douglas?

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with the script to Klatsassin and a text by Ariane Beyn.

STAN DOUGLAS, born in 1960 in Vancouver, lives and works in Vancouver.
EXHIBITIONS (Selection): 2005 Stan Douglas: Inconsolable Memories, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver; Art Gallery of York University, Toronto; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; 2005 La Biennale di Venezia, Venice; 2004 Cuba, David Zwirner, New York; 2002 Stan Douglas, The Serpentine Gallery, London; 2002 Documenta 11, Kassel; 2001 La Biennale di Venezia, Venice; 1999 Stan Douglas, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton; The Power Plant, Toronto; De Pont Museum, Tilburg; MOCA, Los Angeles; 1999 Double Vision, Stan Douglas and Douglas Gordon, DIA Center for the Arts, New York; 1999 Stan Douglas: Pursuit, Fear, Catastrophe: Ruskin, B.C., Fondation Cartier, Paris; 1997 Documenta X, Kassel; 1997 Skulptur. Projekte in Munster, Muenster; 1996 Stan Douglas, Museum Haus Lange & Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld; 1995 Evening and Hors-champs, The Renaissance Society, Chicago; 1994 Stan Douglas and Diana Thater, Witte de With, Rotterdam;1992 Documenta IX, Kassel; 1991 Monodramas, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; 1988 Samuel Beckett: Teleplays (curated by Stan Douglas), Vancouver Art Gallery; 1986 Onomatopoeia, Western Front, Vancouver.

In cooperation with “Monat der Fotografie“
The exhibition is supported by: Hotel Altstadt Vienna


JUDITH HOPF

Galerie

In her art, Judith Hopf deals with stories and aesthetics associated with the sphere of everyday culture, using forms of expression as performance, video, sculpture, and works on paper. Her choice of medium, however, is less decisive than her passionate interest in the field where politics, art, and theory overlap, which can be considered as the frame of reference for many of her projects. Other regular features of her work are a paradoxical panopticon of self-portrayal and a belief in a brightly colored, glamorous pop poetic.

Many of Judith Hopf’s works are developed together with other artists and theoreticians from among her friends. On the basis of critical observations of the everyday, a feeling of political unease with society, and the adaptation of various stories from literary and cinematic sources, she has realized a series of co-productions, the latest of which will be on show at the Secession. With Deborah Schamoni, Judith Hopf made the video Hospital Bone Dance (2006) in which the controlled world of a nurse is disrupted by mysterious goings on. The occurrence of these unforeseen events, their inexorable spread, and the inevitable confrontation with a strictly regulated system set the basic mood for Judith Hopf’s current exhibition. With a generous dose of humor, she points to the eeriness of situations where an unknown variant breaks unexpectedly into a supposedly regular routine. In this case, she plays in particular with notions of expectation and knowledge: the exhibits include a series of mirrors allowing the viewer to see things s/he should not yet actually be able to see. But to get there, the viewer must first pass several bamboo sticks made of glass...

Judith Hopf’s works are characterized by the way they point the viewer in certain directions but without being prescriptive. Instead, there is a marked critical and productive awareness of uniformities propagated within society: Hopf questions their ostensible necessity and transforms them into alternative opinions. In the artist’s view, these everyday observations are closely interwoven with social and political power structures which she aims to render visible. The main issue here is her profound skepticism towards all forms of homogenization and the forgetting that accompanies it. For example, she sees social pressure regarding different life forms that disturb the public consensus and which, accordingly, are excluded or made invisible. According to Judith Hopf, this “tyranny of the same" and the “unfinished" has something eerie about it.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with a text by Diedrich Diederichsen.

JUDITH HOPF, born in 1969 in Karlsruhe, lives and works in Berlin.
EXHIBITIONS (selection) 2006: No Matter How Bright the Light, the Crossing Occurs at Night, Kunst-Werke, Berlin; What do you look like, a crypto demonic mystery, Casco Institute for Art and Design, Utrecht; The Uninvited, WBD Berlin; Happyness, Berlin Biennale, Gagosian Gallery Berlin; 40 Jahre Video Kunst. de, Kunsthalle Bremen; Judith Hopf/ Katrin Pesch, Saki Satom, Michaela Schweigers, Klaus Weber, Galerie Walbrol, Dusseldorf. 2005: 100 Radiodays, De Appel Museum, Amsterdam; Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourist’s Eye, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. 2004: Shizorama, Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Atelier Europa, Kunstverein Munchen; Open Screening, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Das Politische ist privat - und peinlich, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna. 2003: Hey Production, Cubitt Gallery, London; Temporary no good Universe, Kunstiftung Baden Wurttemberg; Windstosse, Kunsthaus, Dresden; Ort des Gegen, Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart; Haupt und Nebenwege, Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne; Tirol Transfer, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna. 2002: Gewalt ist der Rand aller Dinge, Generali Foundation, Vienna; Bei mir zu Dir, Galerie WBD, Berlin; Hossa, Centro Culturale, Antracx, Spain, curated by Karola Grablin and Christian Nagel; participation in the performance festival Die Kraft der Negation, Theater der Welt Cologne/Volksbuhne Berlin, curated by Diedrich Diederichsen. 2001: Adieu Vorholle, Studiogalerie, Kunstverein Braunschweig; Auf offener Strasse, Kunstamt Kreuzberg, Berlin.


MIDORI MITAMURA
GREEN ON THE MOUNTAIN

Grafisches Kabinett

Midori Mitamura’s artistic works occupy a position between photography and installation. They quote elements from the past, either her own or that of strangers, taking this as the point of departure from which to reveal modes of remembering and the reiterating memory of private biography. In a subtle and ironic way, Mitamura sounds out the tensions between individual experience and retrospectively lived history, without losing sight of the volatility and slipperiness of personal experience.

Her installation Green On The Mountain in the Grafisches Kabinett at the Secession is based on a found photograph of a family outing to the mountains. Around this photograph, which has no personal significance for her and which shows people she does not know, Mitamura constructs a space within which she places staged photographs, music, and private memorabilia alongside the found material. The result is a space of the private present, of the here and now, which pushes into the background any thought of the photo archive from which the found photo may have come. Instead, the pictures turn into objects that suggest presence: the spines of books are printed with family snapshots and the hands of a clock tick against a dial made of an old black and white photograph.

Midori Mitamura attempts not only to install pictures in three-dimensions, but also to create three-dimensional images. In this way, she makes the transition from photography to other media. But in spite of this, photography cannot fulfill the wish to pluck the fixed moment out of the flow of time. The clock hands continue to move across the photo, and even a rotating mirror can only capture the picture on the wall as a still image, but not make it turn. Photography is not film is not life.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with texts by Midori Mitamura and Andreas Spiegl.

MIDORI MITAMURA, born in 1964 in Aichi, lives and works in Tokyo.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION): 2006 Art & Breakfast, Raketa Studio, Stockholm; Message From Someone Living Far Away, Antique bookshop KOSHO ICHIRO, Tokyo; 2005 Green On the Mountain, Photographic Gallery Hippolyte, Helsinki; Northern Photographic Center, Oulu; Photographic Center Peri, Turku; 2003 Inventions - Sunny flat days, Galerie ARTicle, Koln; 2002 Stories in two rooms, Room #1 New Siberia Cafe Nadiff, Tokyo; Room #2 Two o'clock afternoon at the hill, on the windy winter day, Contemporary Art Factory, Tokyo; 2001 LIFE - in the lake -Viewing Room, Yumiko Chiba Associates, Tokyo; Where Memories Go, Gallery EBORAN, Salzburg; 2000 Inventions - Sunny flat days, Zeit Foto Salon, Tokyo; Where Memories Go, Keishin Nakaseko Space, Art Event Morph, Tokyo.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION): 2006 Kiss me just once more, Vienna International Apartment, Helsinki; 2005 Busan Biennale; 2004 Location of the Spirits, Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Moscow Contemporary Museum; On Happiness, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo; Moving Japanese Interfacial Spaces, Kulturhuset, Stockholm; Video Art ScreeningTokyo, 8th NICAF Special Program Video Art Exhibition, Tokyo International Forum.

In cooperation with “Monat der Fotografie“
The exhibition is supported by: Japan Foundation

The exhibitions are realized through support of:
Erste Bank - Partner of the Secession
Bundeskanzleramt Kunst
Wien Kultur
Friends of the Secession

Image: Judith Hopf, What do you Look Like? A Crypto Demonic Mystery, Installationsansicht, Casco Projects Utrecht, 2006

For further information and photographic material please contact:
Urte Schmitt-Ulms Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34 presse@secession.at

Opening: Thursday, November 23, 2006, 7 pm

Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstrasse 12, 1010 Vienna
OPENING HOURS
Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. / Thursday 10.am. - 8 p.m.

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