Clemens Krauss
dal 9/6/2010 al 9/7/2010
Segnalato da
9/6/2010
Clemens Krauss
DNA Berlin, Berlin
Ein Alltag. To what extent can human individuals be represented as socially interacting entities, as "bodies" in society and politics? the artist investigates this question in his multi-media works and he often chooses the most difficult approach: He adopts an autobiographical perspective. In this exhibition, he focuses the body as a site of political conflicts and interpersonal relationships, thematize its performative appropriation of experiences, or consider it as an ambivalent bearer of private history and personal identity.
To what extent can human individuals be represented as socially interacting entities, as "bodies" in society and politics? Clemens Krauss investigates this question in his multi-media works and he often chooses the most difficult approach: He adopts an autobiographical perspective.
In this exhibition, he focuses on different body concepts that conceive of the body as a site of political conflicts and interpersonal relationships, thematize its performative appropriation of experiences, or consider it as an ambivalent bearer of private history and personal identity. At the same time, his works emphasize the specifically organic quality of "bodies" in a broader sense, including also working material and living environments.
Vier Körper ("Four bodies"), a series of five canvases, shows life-size bodies observed with the distant surveillance of the bird’s eye view. The poses of these bodies are re-enacted from conflict situations that are familiar to us from the media: Their ubiquity has virtually made them part of our everyday. Conceptually, these canvases continue the approach of the series Chromosomes: Fragmented, almost pictographical bodies are executed in thick layers of oil paint and isolated on white canvases.
With the video Yesterday, the exhibition takes a decidedly autobiographical turn while maintaining an interest in the living conditions and social practices that determine the everyday ("Alltag") in contemporary Western societies.
In the course of a camera movement through the private living space of Clemens Krauss, Yesterday demonstrates the conspicuous presence of images of torture and war within situations of prosaic banality. Thus, amidst the setting of a Berlin artist’s flat, we unexpectedly encounter a mass of human flesh.
In the case of the nine canvas series Denk Display, a selection of works executed during a previously determined time span comes to represent the impressions and thoughts of this particular phase. In the seemingly disparate combination of different genres and techniques, we can distinguish the remembrance of events and media images, as well as of artistic styles and patterns of perception.
The piece Selbstportrait als Objekt ("Self-portrait as an object") consists of a 1950s design chair, which the artist inherited from his grandmother and had covered with a lifelike reproduction of his own skin. With this work, he continues an interest of earlier projects, in which he explored the possibilities of (an artist’s) self-portrayal, culminating in the anti-heroic reduction to the skin – as sheer surface, but also as border of the perception towards both the inside and the outside. If Krauss with his current piece pushes the objectification of the body a step further, yet in an act of appropriation the empty skin is refilled: with history and memory.
What remains of the irrational? shifts the perspective to deal with social perception: Krauss had police experts in Graz (Austria) create identikit pictures of himself according to descriptions provided by his parents and two of his siblings. Thus, he focuses on his provenance and on the way he is perceived by members of his family against the background of a migrating nomad-artist and thus thematizes the question of an absentee’s presence: In his hometown visited only occasionally, Krauss exists as a kind of phantom.
Clemens Krauss, born 1979 in Graz, has presented his works between performance and painting in numerous international solo and group exhibitions and has realized site-specific installations in both institutional and commercial exhibition spaces. His recent solo exhibitions include Large Self-Portrait at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Aufwachen at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, Aufwand – Display at the MAM Museo de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro and Chromosomes at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin.
Image: Large Self-Portrait, 2004/2009, silicone, artist's own hair, mixed media
Press contact
Mirko Nowak press@dnaberlin.net
Opening Reception: Thursday, 10 June 2010 from 6 to 9 p.m.
Artist Talk with Bjørn Melhus: Sunday, 13 June 2010 at 5 p.m.
DNA GmbH
Auguststraße 20 - 10117 Berlin Germany
Opening Hours
Tuesday - Saturday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.