calendario eventi  :: 

X

18/9/2007

Two exhibitions

Wiener Secession, Wien

Piotr Uklański 'A retrospective' + Tue Greenfort 'Medusa'

Tue Greenfort 'Medusa'

Tue Greenfort, Public flower pollination, 2006

How do we define our role in the world? This is the question asked by Danish artist Tue Greenfort, who sees humanity as a marginal part of a far greater whole and who identifies a close link between the question of progress—be it technical, cultural or interpersonal—and our ability to rethink our position in the world. Greenfort’s works reflect his interest in issues of ecology and economics: thinking in global terms, he examines our approach to environmental protection and biodiversity, to resources and sustainable development in view of dwindling supplies of certain materials, relating these themes to the system of art.

Tue Greenfort’s projects are characterized by interdisciplinary openness and a “scientific” approach based on extensive research. MEDUSA, the artist’s first major solo exhibition in Austria, focuses on the complex links between monoculturalization and its consequences, such as the loss of diversity and habitats, both in nature and in urban public space. The show occupies spaces throughout the Secession building, including some not usually used for exhibitions.

By setting up a caviar bar in the former café of the Secession, Greenfort focuses attention on the links between the caviar trade—an extremely lucrative business, with a kilogram of beluga caviar costing up to 7000 euro—and the threat of extinction to the beluga sturgeon (Huso huso), one of the Earth’s oldest species. In spite of a UN convention protecting it, poaching seems to be beyond any form of control. Greenfort relates this development to a notion of luxury and wealth, and to cultural production, the idea of art as a luxury and market value as opposed to autonomous artistic work. In cooperation with WWF Austria and the Austrian Finance Ministry, the artist was able to obtain caviar confiscated by the customs authorities, which he presents as a readymade. This precious commodity is displayed embedded in a narrative of the history of preindustrial sturgeon fishing using historical photographs.

In another project developed specially for the Secession in cooperation with Vienna Butterfly House, Greenfort focuses on the threat posed to biodiversity by structural changes to habitats in the spread and intensification of monocultures. In each of a series of brief interventions by performer Mia Parmas, visitors to the exhibition will be shown a living specimen of an exotic species of butterfly that is threatened with extinction and which is therefore being bred at the Butterfly House. The exclusivity of the exotic species is contrasted—also in terms of its unspectacular appearance—with the common European cabbage white that is able to adapt perfectly to monocultures and thus to today’s living conditions. This species is presented in the form of a specimen prepared by the artist in the style of traditional natural history collections. Thus the usual scale of values is inverted, using this moment of fleetingness to call into question both artistic forms of representation and the values of collectors.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of a catalogue (German/English).

TUE GREENFORT, born in 1973 in Holbæk (Denmark), lives and works in Berlin.

SOLO SHOWS (selection): 2007 Johann König, Berlin; 2006 Max Wigram Gallery, London; Arts & Ecology programme, Royal Society of Arts, London; 2005 Betreten des Grundstücks erlaubt, Kunstverein Arnsberg; Als ob wir nicht die Besitzende wären, Palais für Aktuelle Kunst, Gluckstadt; Dänische Schweine und andere Märkte, Johann König, Berlin; 2004 Umwelt, Gallery Zero, Milan; RE PRÄSENTATION, 1822 Forum, Frankfurt am Main; Spediteur Zimmer, Galerie Nicolas Krupp, Basel; 2003 Used and Produced, Schnittraum, Köln; Fresh and Upcoming, Frankfurter Kunstverein; 2002 Out of site, Johann König, Berlin; 2001 The Peripheral Centre, Dontmiss, Frankfurt/Main; 2000 Exchange, in cooperation with NIFCA, Städelschule, Frankfurt/Main.

GROUP SHOWS (selection): 2007 RSA, Royal Society for Encouragement of Arts, London; Made in Germany, Sprengel Museum Hannover; Modelle von morgen: Köln, Europäische Kunsthalle, Cologne; OEen Group Show, OEen Group, Copenhagen; Skulptur Projekte Münster; Nachvollziehungsangebote, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; 2006 Momentum, Nordic Festival of contemporary art, Moss; Jagdsalon, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin; Inaugural Exhibition, Johann König, Berlin; 2005 Lichtkunst aus Kunstlicht, ZKM, Karlsruhe; Threshold, Max Wigram Gallery, London; 2004 L´attitude des autres, SMP, Marseilles; Ce qui reste, Galerie du TNB, Rennes, Prisma, Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna.

We wish to thank the following for their help with developing and realizing the projects: Stephen Fried of Vienna Butterfly House; Christian Kubicek, Institute of Chemical Engineering, Vienna Technical University; Jutta Jahrl, WWF Austria; Austrian Finance Ministry; Vienna Natural History Museum.

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Piotr Uklański 'A retrospective'

In his photographic works, collages, sculptures, and installations, Polish artist Piotr Uklański uses stereotypical motifs and strategies from pop culture, art, and cinema to address issues of cultural identity and authenticity.

Uklański has a reputation for a certain insolence with regard to the way he plays with audience expectations, the way he not only uses strategies of selfpromotion and marketing but also draws on them for fundamental aspects of his conceptual work, and the way he coopts references. He starts with pictures that are already bankrupt, hackneyed, and hollow and proceeds to totally destroy them. He recycles visuals, concepts, and clichés—landscapes, sunsets, Hollywood, great artists, collectors, curators—and gives them a new presence, both crass and seductive, precisely by questioning the politics of different visual worlds. But it would be wrong to describe his approach as either critical or affirmative. These categories will not stick to his perfect surfaces, just as they won’t stick to the works of Jeff Koons.

Uklański presents himself as a star, as a bad boy of the art world. His film SUMMER LOVE (2006), a tragicomic Western whose most prominent actor, Val Kilmer in the role of a corpse, is not given a single line, was launched, naturally, as the “first” Polish Western. His girlfriend Alison Gingeras, whose bare buttocks he published as a double page ad in Artforum as UNTITLED (GINGER ASS) (2003), is curator to the collector François Pinault. The xray image of a skull in swirling psychedelic colors does not show just any old skull, but that of this major collector. Elizabeth Peyton, known for her portraits of celebrities, has also drawn Piotr Uklański. He is interested in role play and fame because the resulting attention is a screen against which to deliberately place his artist image.

He is concerned, however, not with developing his own myth but with analyzing its mechanisms. Within the theater of his work, he likes to take on multiple roles, wanting to be “a modern­ist, a post-minimalist, a Popconceptualist, a photographer, a dilettante, a painter’s muse, a political artist like Boltanski and a filmmaker like Polanski.” (Flash Art, #236, May 2004)

At the Secession, he is showing older and new sitespecific works, subjecting his own output to a renewed examination that paints a selfportrait of the artist as a montage, as a nonauthentic artificial construct. In a recent interview he said: “If we presume that art or other creative activity is capable of reflecting the truth about human existence, [...] it should not mimic that existence but create an artificial reality/form.” (Spike, #11, 2007) Finally, is he perhaps a Romantic after all?

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of a catalogue (German/English).

PIOTR UKLAŃSKI, born in 1968 in Warsaw (Poland), lives and works in New York and Warsaw.

SOLO SHOWS (selection): 2005 Tristes Tropiques, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Miami; Mosaïc at Museo de Acude, Rio de Janeiro; Polonia, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris; 2004 Earth, Wind and Fire, Kunsthalle Basel; Zimna Wojna, Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan; La Flamme Eternelle à l'amitié francopolonaise, La Nuit Blanche, Paris; 2003 New Paintings, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; 2002 Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris; Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan; 2001 Sneak Preview, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; The Deep, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; 2000 A Norwegian Photograph, Fotogaleriet, Oslo; Nazisci, Galeria Zacheta, Warsaw; The Nazis, Kunstwerke, Berlin; Project 72, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

GROUP SHOWS (selection): 2006 Where are we going?, Palazzo Grassi, Venice; 2005 Poles Apart: Contemporary Polish Art, Rubell Collection, Miami; Expérience de la durée, Lyon 8th Biennial of Contemporary Art; Superstars – The Principle of Renown, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Just do it!, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; Universal Experience: Art, Life and Tourist’s Eye, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Coolhunters, ZKM, Karlsruhe; 2004 La Flamme Eternelle, La Nuit Blanche, Place du Trocadéro, Paris; Image Smugglers, 26th Biennial of São Paulo; Art After Image, Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen; Czarny Kwadrat, Bialystok, Poland; 2003 The Moderns, Castello di Rivoli, Torino; Dreams and Conflicts, the Dictatorship of the Viewer, 50th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennial; Hidden in a Daylight, Hotel Pod Brunatnym Jeleniem, Cieszyn, Poland.

Image: Piotr Uklański, Untitled (President du groupe Artemis, Monsieur Francois Pinault), 2003

For further information please contact:
Urte Schmitt-Ulms, tel.: +43 1 5875307-10; fax: +43 1 5875307-34; email: pr@secession.at

Press conference: Wed., September 19, 11 am
Opening: Wed., September 19, 7 pm

Wiener Secession
Friedrichstrasse 12 - Wien

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