calendario eventi  :: 

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27/2/2008

Two exhibitions

Wiener Secession, Wien

Werner Feiersinger

In his photographic works, collages, sculptures, and Contradictions between the dogmatic theoretical demands of classical Modernism and later classical Modernist works in architecture that do not strictly fulfill these demands provide the material for Werner Feiersinger’s work. He is interested in the mystification of Modernism as an embodiment of functionality and rationality, a myth generated by the written statements of prominent figures of the period and by their almost equally dogmatic and hence “uncritical” reception.

The sculptor and photographer is not prepared to let this go unnoticed. On the contrary, he is motivated precisely by these inconsistencies and contradictions, producing ambivalent objects and photographs of subject matter that is well enough known but from a surprisingly unconventional point of view capable of bringing different and unexpected aspects to light.

The precision with which Feiersinger executes his works is matched by the scope of his preparation, research, and engagement with a given architectural or artistic canon. These are taken mostly from Modernism, ranging from architects like Le Corbusier, who helped to define the canon, through Erich Mendelsohn, whose expressive style subverted the orthodox rules, and on to artists who left their mark on Minimalism: Donald Judd, who focused on mastering the material, but more especially Tony Smith with his anthropomorphic references and Anne Truitt with her associative links, both of whom worked, strictly speaking, against the canon.

For Werner Feiersinger, an exhibition in the Secession’s Hauptraum – itself an icon of modern architecture and the “ideal” exhibition space of the white cube – is a fitting challenge. He has made a new work: the delicately curved steel structure (17 m long, 2.80 m tall), a quotation from Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, becomes the architecturally dominant element, structuring the space. The full-size reconstruction, a detail from the villa’s entrance area, is accurately based on Le Corbusier’s plans, although it differs from the actual building.

Around this work, Feiersinger has positioned other new sculptures. His objects are embedded in a complex network of references from the history of art and architecture and from his own life. Ladders, shovels, scaffolding, or equipment for games feign utility; formal associations with tools or means of production are evoked and playful links established. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that the objects are thoroughly dysfunctional. They have become emancipated from their ostensible concrete meaning and are going their own ways. This ambivalence, which extends to Feiersinger’s treatment of surfaces, characterizes his works.

The same is true of his photographs, which show canonical buildings from architectural history, but from an unorthodox, subjective angle. These “standards” are juxtaposed with structures and situations of architecture in use, presented as being totally equal in value. The photographs thus not only question and undermine a visual convention, but also testify visually to an aesthetic quality identified by Feiersinger in what is supposedly inadequate or inappropriate. Although in understated form, the paradoxical dogma of the undogmatic is a thread running through the whole show.


Exhibition discussion
with Werner Feiersinger and Jörg Heiser
Thursday, 10. 4. 2008, 6.30 p.m.
A Friends of the Secession event

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog (German/English) with an essay by Barbara Steiner.

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Philippe Decrauzat

With his wall paintings, films, sculptures, paintings, and installations, Philippe Decrauzat’s art is firmly rooted in the legacy of 20th century abstract art, using the formal idiom of Russian Constructivism, the visual effects of Op Art, or the reduced geometries of Minimalism. In spite of this, his works are characterized by their claim to maintain a certain critical distance to all these styles. Consequently, Decrauzat’s position with regard to Modernism is not at all as it appears at first glance. His practice is also associated with the methods and theories of experimental film or pop culture, the cinematography of science fiction, etc. The power of his work lies above all in a “compression” of modern modes of seeing. Beyond the Modernist logic of the optical, Decrauzat focuses on the eye, an instrument long excluded from the discourse of the period.

The exhibition concept developed by Philippe Decrauzat for the Secession highlights the links and transitions between the individual exhibition spaces and provides a metaphor for a balancing of the various areas and periods of art history.

In the Kreuzraum, Decrauzat presents his new film AFTER BIRDS (2008) for which he digitally rearranged stills from the trailer for Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS. The film revolves around an idea of paranoia that can be expressed either in actual physical violence or in a purely subjective shift in perceptions. A central theme reflected in the exhibition architecture is the “fade in/fade out” in the sense of an announcement or premonition that can and will only be confirmed in the course of the film.

This presentation contrasts with the reduced installation in the brighter Zwischenraum in which Decrauzat alludes to various outstanding topoi and events of modern art, such as the Dada review THE BLIND MAN published by Marcel Duchamp in 1917 or Joseph Beuys’ performance COYOTE from 1974, both of which feature a stick as their central symbol.

In the Galerie space, on the other hand, Decrauzat focuses on an abstract idea of movement and on the question of how it can be depicted at a paradoxical total standstill: The grid patterned sculpture MAN THE SQUARE refers explicitly to a motion photograph by Eadweard Muybridge whose physiological experiments involved subjects including birds. Decrauzat also developed the sculpture STRUCTURE specially for the show - two frames nested inside each other that refer to a display format already used for propaganda purposes. But Decrauzat foregoes content entirely, merely presenting the basic structure (although in slightly distorted form) which recalls the placeholder “X”. Most importantly, however, the sculpture offers a view of a large-scale wall painting which, based on the moiré effect, plays with perception by means of shifts and layering. While the sculpture’s frame remains “empty,” the pictures appear on the wall like fleeting ideas.


The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog (German/English).


PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT, born in 1974 in Lausanne, lives and works in Lausanne.

SOLO SHOWS (selection): 2008 Le Spot, Le Havre; Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Berlin; 2007 Screening, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; Undercover, Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zurich; 2006 Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris; Centre d´Art Contemporain, Geneva; Plate 28, Swiss Institute, New York; Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich; 2005 Vista Vision, Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris; Art Basel Miami Beach; Komakino, Mamco, Geneva; General Dynamics, Centre d’art Synagogue de Delme, France; Nowherenow, Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz/Basel; 2003 That’s the image I want, Glassbox, Paris; 2002 Go for a ride, Le Hall, Enba, Lyon; Prix Manor, Elac, Lausanne; 2001 Galerie Patrick Roy, Lausanne.

GROUP SHOWS (selection): 2007 Secondary Structures, KIT/ Kunsthalle Dusseldorf; At Home In The Universe, Art Center Mongin, Korea; Freak Show, Musée des Beaux arts de Lyon; Accélération, CAN, Neuchâtel; The Happyness of Objects, Sculpture Center New York; Painting as Fact < Fact as Fiction, De Pury & Luxembourg, Zurich; Half Square, Half Crazy / A Demi Carre, A Demi Fou, Villa Arson, Nice; Kunstart/acceleration, Usine Suchard and CAN, Neuchâtel; 2006 Aller-Retour, Centre culturel Suisse, Paris; Hysteria Siberiana, Crista Guerra contemporary Art, Lisbon; Cinq milliards d´années, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Black/White Chewing Gum, Galerie Krobath Wimmer, Vienna; War on 45/my Mirror art painted black (for you), Bortolamy Dayan Gallery, New York; Bring the War Home, Elisabeth Dee Gallery, New York; La Générale, Hradacany, Paris; Objets d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, Ecole municipale des beaux-arts, Gennevilliers, France; Branding, Centre PasquArt, Biel, Switzerland; Surfaces polyphoniques, CRAC, Sète, France.


The exhibitions are realized through support of:
Erste Bank – Partner of the Secession
Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur
Wien Kultur
Friends of the Secession

The exhibition is supported by:
Pro Helvetia Schweizer Kulturstiftung

Image: Werner Feiersinger

Opening: Thursday, February 28, 2008, 7 pm

Wiener Secession
Friedrichstrasse 12 - Wien

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