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26/2/2003

Hans Schabus and Manfred Willmann

Wiener Secession, Wien

HANS SCHABUS
Astronaut (be right back)
Main Room
February 27 – April 27, 2003


Hans Schabus' works are immediately related to a spatial thinking and experience; his sculptures and interventions often refer directly to the artist's mental and physical surroundings, especially to his atelier and the material to be processed there. The place where art is created is investigated in terms of its analogy potential with respect to life. The works can be read as a meditation on the creative act, its aspirations, but also on the difference from everyday activity. The film works that deal with traveling, speed and non-goal-oriented movement refer to the significance of an interdisciplinary reflection for art.

The exhibition project by Hans Schabus at the Secession comprises several elements that treat the possibilities arising from various perspectives of "empty space" as sculptural material. On the facade of the Secession, under the dome, the word "astronaut" is written in large glowing yellow neon letters, alluding to the unlimitedness of outer space in contrast to the enclosed space.

Inside, Schabus blocks the entrance to the exhibition space with a wall, with unplastered traces of work showing in the entrance space, whereas the other side is invisible as part of the wall of the building. The only entrance to the main room that is available to visitors is a tunnel leading through the branching cellar and side rooms of the Secession. In the main room, Schabus has built a true-to-scale model of his atelier out of cardboard and squared timbers. It is not until one leaves the windowless installation that the construction and positioning of the "atelier" become apparent to the gaze from the outside. The form of the architectonic sculpture picks up from the floor pattern of the Secession, thus penetrating into the representative space quasi from below. What concerns Schabus is not so much a display of his working situation or place of production, but rather the atelier model, as a space set into a space, mirrors the presentation context of the exhibition space. In a manner similar to a film set, the "empty" space has more potential than reality.

In the side depots of the main room, Hans Schabus additionally shows two films that involve passageways, hallways and tunnels. In Western, a video that was already highly acclaimed when it was shown at Manifest IV in Frankfurt last year, one sees Schabus in a small, self-made sailboat named "forlorn" taking a boat ride through the sewers of Vienna. The boat ride begins in the sewer area directly beneath the Secession. His seemingly endless journey through the sewers, the darkness and dirt, touches on universal questions of taking flight and not arriving. With this work, Schabus refers to Bas Jan Ader, a Dutch concept artist of the 70s, who disappeared without a trace while crossing the Atlantic in a small boat. "Like Bas Jan Ader, I try to realize projects that are sensuous, poetic and even poignant." At the same time, the film calls to mind the film The Third Man, the key scene of which plays in the same sewer system of Vienna.

The second video, Astronaut, shows how the artist digs a shaft in his atelier, in order to crawl through it and then run frantically through a seemingly endless, narrow tunnel, arriving finally at the preliminary end exhausted, only to start digging again. The film flows associatively into the branching sewer system of Vienna, then leads on from below through the tunnel system in the Secession and perhaps into outer space.

Hans Schabus has arranged the path through the Secession as a circuit. After the tunnel, "atelier" and main room, it finally leads down through one of the depots into the vaulted space of the gallery, ending in the cleaning room under the stairs. The interest that is implicit here is in how a narrative can be created through the course of a path. This story is continued in urban space. In cooperation with museum in progress and Infoscreen, another short film by Hans Schabus is shown in the underground stations and trains as part of the exhibition. Hans Schabus connects his atelier with the Secession via the underground train network.

PUBLICATION
A bilingual catalogue (German/English) will be published on the exhibition, with an interview between Matthias Herrmann and Hans Schabus and texts by Otto von Guericke.


HANS SCHABUS, born 1970, lives and works in Vienna
Solo exhibitions (selcetion): 2003 Der Schacht von Babel, Kerstin Engholm Galerie, Vienna, 2002 I don't look back I look in front, James Cohan Gallery, New York, 2000 Nur weil ich Paranoia habe, heißt das noch lange nicht, dass mich niemand verfolgt, Galerie Luis Campaña, Cologne, 1999 Fotoprofile (with Gottfried Bechtold), Camera Austria, Graz
Group exhibitions (selcetion): 2002 Uncommon Denominator: New Art from Vienna, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Williamstown; Das Neue, Austrian Gallery Belvedere, Vienna; Manifesta 4, European Biennale of Contemporary Art, Frankfurt/Main; 2001 Ein gut platzierter Helm ist wie ein beruhigender Blick, Kunsthalle Nuremberg; 2000 Milch vom ultrablauen Strom - Strategien Österreichischer Künstler, Kunsthalle Krems; Fouri da Qui, Austrian Cultural Institute, Rome

All In-Situs: Matthias Herrmann

Image: Hans Schabus, Exhibition View
__________

MANFRED WILLMANN
Gallery, Grafisches Kabinett
February 27 – April 27, 2003


Manfred Willmann, the Austrian photographer and editor of the magazine "Camera Austria", shows the two photo cycles Das Land (1981 - 1993) and Oman (1997) at the Secession. Although the series are based on the documentary, they go beyond the mere registration of phenomena. Manfred Willmann's intention is to go beyond the regulatory of the documentary: "I want to be ahead of the feeling of the times. I want to show things more beautiful than they are, or uglier." (Manfred Willmann)

Every photograph documents "something". The discourse, however, has long since left behind the definition of photography as the unmediated transfer of physical manifestations. We meanwhile accept as given that the camera produces ideologically charged representations through the translation of the real into the pictorial. Documentary photography, in particular, is often determined by this perception and instrumentalization.

Manfred Willmann, on the other hand, is a proponent of a direction of documentary photography that eludes ideological appropriation. His photography is conceptual, making use of the documentary style simply as a gesture.

Approximately 135 photographs from the cycle Das Land (1981 - 1993) are on display in the Galerie of the Secession. The selection is based on the book of the same name, which was published in 2000, as well as several previously unpublished photographs from the same series. The pictures, which were taken in a loose sequence, show shots from southern Styria. The spectrum of portrayals is broad, but certain motifs recur again and again: people carrying out unspectacular, everyday tasks; working, grooming themselves, eating, celebrating, playing cards; animals, living, dead, slaughtered; the locations of rural life and their details: kitchens, meals, leftovers, inns, town fair situations, and in between, again and again, landscape shots of southern Styria.

In his photographs, Willmann alternates between landscapes and details, persons and still-lifes. The photographs reveal that Willmann did not approach his objects as an outsider. Styria, the photographer's home, is not constructed as something "exotic" from an urban viewpoint, but rather documented as a habitat. Das Land is less the theme, than the motif.

The artistic interventions in Willmann's photographs do not take place during development, but rather during the shooting. The pictures are not manipulated and the uniform format of the prints of 70 x 70 cm corresponds to the 6 x 6 cm of the slide.
Where Willmann intervenes, perhaps also to make sure that the pictures are not unambiguously legible, is in the light and the perspective. Willmann frequently uses a special flash that tears the figure out of the background, whether it is a person, a cow or an apple on a tree, so that the entire scene undergoes a different charge.

In the Grafisches Kabinett of the Secession, photographs from the series Oman are presented. The central difference between these photographs from 1997 and those of Das Land, is that these were taken during a journey and panoramically. The pictures, in the format 80 x 160 cm, convey an approach that is different from that of travel photos or photographs for a geographical magazine; Willmann's view goes beyond a specific country. Willmann accords the horizon a central role - it is always positioned exactly in the middle of the picture. The series Oman has previously only been shown in Zagreb and Trier and is now shown at the Secession for the first time in Austria.

Whether it is through the use of flash in Das Land or the choice of a panoramic representation in Oman, Willmann avoids the trap of either a one-sided representation of the given or the danger of an auratic pathos that this would yield.

PUBLICATION
A bilingual publication (German/English) is published in conjunction with the exhibition with essays by Marina Grzinic and Wolfgang Kos.


MANFRED WILLMANN, born 1952 in Graz, lives and works in Graz
Solo exhibitions (selected): 2002 Das Land, Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb; Oman, Galerija Krizic, Zagreb; 2001 Lebensmittel, KunstRaum Hinrichs, Trier; 1997 Werkschau II, Arbeiten von 1971-1996, Fotogalerie Wien; 1996 Das Land, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; 1995 Pour Christine, Le Garage, Reims; 1993 Die Japan-Arbeit, Galerie Eugen Lendl, Graz; 1991 Die Sieger and more, Galerie Torch, Amsterdam; 1990 Die Sieger, Museum Flokwang, Essen; 1983 Die Welt ist schön, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz
Group exhibitions (selected): 2002 Augenblick, Sammlung Essl, Kunst der Gegenwart, Wien; 2001 Oh, Europe!, nederlands foto instituut, Rotterdam; La Natura della Natura Morta, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna (Catalogue); 2000 Milano Senza Confini - 10 fotografi europei leggono la città, Spazio Oberdan, Mailand; Der anagrammatische Körper, ZKM Karlsruhe; 1997 Tokyo Today, Kagoshima City Museum of Art
1980 founder and publisher of the magazine CAMERA AUSTRIA


All In-Situs: Matthias Herrmann



Wiener Secession, Association of Visual Artists
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34

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