Karl Karners
dal 4/4/2011 al 3/5/2011
Segnalato da
4/4/2011
Karl Karners
Galerie Dana Charkasi, Wien
Alan Grunspan. Artist's work is situated at the intersection between the objectuality of sculpture and a more recent order of sculpture set in a social context. While it does not want to instigate further action by itself, it still calls for the active taking part of individuals in the process of realising the artwork.
Karl Karners work is situated at the intersection between the objectuality of sculpture and a more recent order of sculpture set in a social context. While it does not want to instigate further action by itself, it still calls for the active taking part of individuals in the process of realising the artwork.
In Karner’s installations and art environments, viewers frequently become bit players. Such participative impulses accentuate the irony inherent in these artworks. Single elements are taken from Minimal and Concept Art, whereupon their meaningfulness is upgraded and they are used as speculative patterns in reproducible settings. The repetition of recurring motifs references the serial production of industrial objects. In Karner’s work, these motifs are hand-made pieces of cast iron that become part of the artistic process. His preferred motifs are beaked creatures and dogs or hares, often clad with bronze or gold. The fact that they appear in series reminds of Pop Art or Concept Art, but their static nature is broken by the involvement of real people. It would almost seem that these inanimate fantastic creatures are brought to life by the protagonists.
In Karner’s creations, a multitude of tubes injecting or extracting liquid constitute a metabolic system that can, however, only be activated by the viewers or users. To speak of users in the context of this work is possible because the artist generates life situations that reference the virtuality of computer games. With their interactive potential, the environments created by Karner generate various forms of display that are composed similar to arrangements of theatre props and are complemented by a series of performative gestures.
Karl Karner’s multisensorial, fictional fairytale worlds tell a story of incessantly repeated settings of every day life, albeit with their function deconstructed, which clearly point out the absurdity of certain processes through the repetition of objectual elements. Their inherent performativity is applied not only to mere a fine art context, it also spreads out to the domain of theatrical scenes and art performances where the public is involved beyond the limits of museum presentations according to the directing principle in stage-based performative models.
Karner’s pieces function in the context of a gallery or a museum as static objects, whilst their stage-bound performative character reaches out to the dimensions of theatre space and audience. Commensurabilities proper of every day always have an intrinsic bond with social interaction in public space. They are unmasked as banalities and transformed into playful gestures so as to bring the alienation of sense and purpose into play as an artistic chain of arguments that addresses the matter of objectuality.
Image: Alan Grünspan, Bronze, Silikon, 2011
Vernissage: tuesday 5 April h 19
Galerie Dana Charkasi
A-1010 Vienna, Fleischmarkt 11
Griechenbeisl-House, 2nd floor
Opening Hours: Tue - Fri 1 - 6 p.m., Sat 11 a.m. - 2 p.m.
and by appointment