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16/10/2001

Tele(visions)

Kunsthalle Wien, Wien

In the past 50 years, TV has become the most popular medium worldwide. Not only our main supplier of information, entertainment, and their crossbreed, infotainment, it is also a kind comforter to the lonely, a babysitter loved by parents and children alike, a relaxant for the stress-ridden, and, for some, the no. 1 cultural epidemic. TV is the largest reservoir of the collective memory, creating and transforming identities - not least because it makes the private public. TV is still stirring up public controversy, taking the role of the eternal scapegoat for the alleged 'dumbing down' of society or the decline of morals. TV is ubiquitous, and yet will always remain a usual suspect for cultural pessimists.

Tele(visions) shows how artists have absorbed, critically challenged, and occasionally reinvented their TV experience in their work, analyzing and ironizing couch potatoes, talk-show hosts, quiz shows and TV news, glamorous prime-time shows, the circus of afternoon talk-shows. The exhibition documents artists' initiatives for a different TV, presents ways of continuous image recycling and shows that TV is more than an easily accessible mine for video art.
The various influences of, and responses to, TV in different generations of artists are presented here for the first time in broad range. The show is a unique compilation of more than eighty works with a special focus on the 1980s and '90s. Paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations, videos, and film excerpts illustrate the intense attention that artists from diverse social and ideological backgrounds have given to TV, both playfully and seriously. Far beyond the usual lamentation about the encroachment of the mass taste of mainstream cultural industry on visual art, Tele(visions) reflects the creative, critical, and complex potential of this reciprocal relationship.

The presence of TV becomes experienceable on several levels, from literal (i.e. iconographic) references to TV, or the TV set, as an omnipresent object of everyday life up to rather oblique allusions to the atmosphere of life flooded by TV. Some of the artists exhibited deliver a sophisticated critique of TV's socio-political operations, some prefer to ambivalently celebrate its aesthetic effects and affects, while still others allow the resonance of TV to hover around the margins of their work.

The range spans from William Wegman's photo work 'T.V.' (1972), revealing the more comical aspects of domestic life in front o the TV set, up to Thomas Demand's photograph 'Studio' (1997), showing the reconstruction of a TV studio set. In 'Movie - Television - News - History, June 21, 1979' (1979), Sarah Charlesworth analyzes the relationship between news coverage on TV and in the papers. Maurizio Cattelan's sculpture 'If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around it, does it make a sound?' (1998) is a funny assemblage of a donkey and a TV. Doron Solomon's video 'Lullaby' (1998) documents TV coverage of conflict and violence in the Middle East; Lot/Ek develop a new TV-watching environment in 'TV-Tank' (1999), and in 'Das Zimmer' (1994), Pipilotti Rist paraphrases the visual predominance of the TV set.

'As we enter the new century, it is a propitious moment to look back at the impact of television, and to reevaluate its relationship to artmaking', writes exhibition curator Joshua Decter. 'In Tele(visions), the audience is invited to rethink art, architecture, and film through the filter of television, and vice-versa.'

Artists Participating:
Maike Abetz & Oliver Drescher, Vito Acconci, Ant Farm, Apsolutno, Art Club 2000, Michel Auder, John Baldessari, Martin Beck, Mark Bennett, Ashley Bickerton, Dara Birnbaum, Dike Blair, Candice Breitz, Chris Burden, Miguel Calderón, Sophie Calle, Maurizio Cattelan, Sarah Charlesworth, Larry Clark, Hans-Christian Dany, Thomas Demand, Jessica Diamond, Jan Dibbets, Do-Foundation, Peter Dombrowe, Tracey Emin, Harun Farocki/Andrei Ujica, GALA Committee, General Idea, Nan Goldin, Paul Graham, Simon Grennan & Christopher Sperandio, Keith Haring, Astrid Herrmann, Christine Hill, Jonathan Horowitz, Jim Isermann, Sanja Ivekovic, Christian Jankowski, Martin Kippenberger, Alexander Kluge, Barbara Kruger, Sean Landers, Louise Lawler, LOT/Ekarchitecture, Miltos Manetas, Dorit Margreiter, Allan McCollum, John Miller, Antonio Muntadas, Tony Oursler, Nam June Paik, Paper Tiger Television, Philippe Parreno, Zhang Peili, Raymond Pettibon, Daniel Pflumm, Richard Prince, David Reeb, Tobias Rehberger, Pipilotti Rist, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Ursula Rogg, Julian Rosefeldt, Martha Rosler, Christoph Schlingensief, Ilene Segalove, Richard Serra, David Shrigley, Laurie Simmons, Michael Smith & Joshua, Doron Solomons, Wolfgang Staehle, Haim Steinbach, Szuper Gallery, TVTV, Van Gogh T.V., Klaus vom Bruch, Carrie Mae Weems, William Wegman, Olav Westphalen, Måns Wrange, Joseph Zehrer

Curator: Joshua Decter, New York
Project Manager: Gabriele Mackert, curator Kunsthalle Wien
Curator Side Program: Justin Hoffmann, Munich/Vienna
Exhibition Design: veech.media architecture

Side Program:
In a comprehensive events program, Tele(visions) will be extended at a discourse, performance, and audiovisual level with discussions, film showings, club evenings, and concerts so as to take account of art practices that are not easily presentable in an exhibition context, underscoring the virtual and ephemeral character of TV as a medium.

Exhibition Catalogue:
With contributions by José Luis Brea, Joshua Decter, Justin Hoffmann, Gabriele Mackert, Robert Riley and artists' statements, German language, 312 pages with numerous color illustrations.
Kunsthalle Wien (ed.), ISBN 3-85247031-5, ATS 290,(Euro 21,07)

Opening: Wednesday, 17 October, 2001, 7 p.m.
Open daily 10 a.m. 7 p.m., Thur 10 a.m. - 10 p.m.

We thank our exhibition sponsor Wiener Städtische Versicherung

Information and photos: Claudia Bauer, KUNSTHALLE wien, Museumsplatz 1, A-1070 Vienna, phone (+43 1) 521 89-22, fax (+43 1) 521 89-25

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