calendario eventi  :: 

X

24/4/2002

Two exhibitions

Wiener Secession, Wien

AYSE ERKMEN
Kein gutes Zeichen
Main Gallery
April 25 - June 23, 2002

In her installations Ayse Erkmen takes the empty spaces and open questions that architectures and surroundings leave behind and translates them into a minimalist grammar of forms. The multipart installation for the Secession
starts from the separation between the entrance area and the exhibition space and evolves from the resulting tension between the different imagined moments of the building and its surroundings.

In the middle section of the main room, beams of light move across the glass ceiling. They mark the underside of two platforms that are mounted above the ceiling of the exhibition room and are normally used for cleaning the
glass surfaces. By artistically emphasizing them, Erkmen addresses an intersection of illumination and daylight that defines the exhibition situation. While the platforms continuously glide back and forth horizontally across the
entire length of the room, Erkmen introduces a second movement on the left and right in the side sections.

Two video projections that are projected onto the glass ceiling from the "off" as well each display a white circle on a black background, which flashes at a varying rhythm. While the impulses set a signal on the glass ceiling, at the
same time they also refer to motifs from early avant-garde films and their experiments with light and perception, which used structural abstraction to pursue a "different way of seeing". By shifting the action in her installation
to the glass ceiling, which is simultaneously the boundary of the space, Erkmen constructs a situation, in which elements of avant-garde film and the white cube meet at an imagined and architectural suture: the myth of a neutral
space, the artistic practice of rejecting the logistics and image language of the commercial (film)industry and introducing the economic, social and political implications of representations into the aesthetic experience through
abstraction. Parallel to this, Erkmen shifts the motor noise of the moving platforms into the space itself, thus inserting an acoustic level in addition to the visual one.

This scene is prefaced by a slide series in the foyer of the Secession, which again picks up the circular form.

The circle, which is open and abstract in the main room, here shows the surface of coffee projected onto the rosette above the entrance, a central part of the architecture characterized by Jugendstil. In the pictures, which leave out
the edge of the coffee cup, the arrangement and the density of the bubbles resulting from boiling the coffee vary and continuously assume new formations in the successive sequence of the projection.

The subject of "coffee" in the entrance area and the installations in the main gallery retain the possibility of multiple interpretations in their social and historical implications. And they are provocative in the way they are
combined with one another, in relation to the title of the project and the interior and exterior spaces surrounding them, but also in relation to the question of a transfer of cultural narratives in an exhibition context. At the same
time, Erkmen emphasizes in her work the temporariness: the ephemere of an interpretation, but also of an artistic practice of site-related installations.

In both form and content, this project for the Secession ties into Erkmen's earlier works. This aspect is explicitly expressed in the exhibition catalogue, which includes an article by Fatih Özgüven as well as large-format pictures -
including pictures of the works Das Haus (DAAD Galerie, Berlin, 1993), Eingang (Inclusion/ Exclusion, Künstlerhaus, Graz, 1996), Sculptures on Air (Münster Sculpture Project, 1997), Shipped Ships (Frankfurt am Main,
2001) - that reflect cross-references within Erkmen's artistic practice.

Ayse Erkmen lives and works in Berlin and Istanbul.
Exhibitions (selected): 2001 Looking at You, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel; Tische der Kommunikation, Städtischen Galerie im Museum Folkwang, Essen; Berlin Biennale, Postfuhramt; Shipped Ships, Main, Frankfurt am
Main, Kuaförde iki Kadýn, Chambal, Eudora, Emre ve Dario, Maçka Sanat Galerisi, Istanbul; 2000 Half of, Galerie Deux, Tokyo; Man muss ganz schön viel lernen um hier zu funktionieren, Frankfurter Kunstverein; Zeitwenden,
Museum Moderner Kunst, 20er Haus, Vienna; Biennial of Kwanju, Korea; 1999 Under the Same Sky, Kiasma, Helsinki; Zeitwenden, Kunstmuseum Bonn; Fireworks, De Appel, Amsterdam; Dream City, Villa Stuck, Munich

There will be a bilingual publication on the exhibition in German and English with a text by Fatih Özgüven.

Image: Ayse Erkmen Ohne Titel, Secession,Vienna, 2002
_____________

TRINA ROBBINS
She Draws Comics
Gallery, Grafisches Kabinett, Links
April 25 - June 23, 2002

Since the sixties, the cartoonist and pop historian Trina Robbins has been a central figure in the women's comics scene in the US. She plays numerous roles: artist, producer, active networker and, in recent years, also a chronicler of
the women's comics movement. The exhibition that she has put together for the Secession, She Draws Comics, displays the diversity of women's comics production in the USA with a broad selection of both historical and
contemporary original drawings, comics and zines. The exhibition conveys historical and biographical backgrounds, but without leveling the diversity of individual approaches, and it illuminates aspects of production and
distribution within the framework of emancipatory do-it-yourself strategies, the emphatic formulation of individual positions, and the industrial comic market.

Although comics are a medium frequently used in art, the collection shown here was created outside the art context. Nevertheless, various threads and connections may be identified in the exhibition, which also tie into current
discourses in the field of art. Different stations of a feminist language are evident in the exploration of topics of production and situatedness in the sense of a counter-public sphere.

The spectrum of approaches ranges from science fiction and fantasy (Donna Barr), soap opera (Dale Messick), bitingly humorous newspaper strips (Nina Paley) to the genre of autobiographical comics, whereby the latter seems to
dominate at the present. The author's stories deal just as much with conventional circumstances as with the unrelenting disclosure of psychological encroachment (Debbie Drechsler, Phoebe Gloeckner, Penny Van Horn). The
picture-text stories are an ideal medium for discussing social and political commitment and expressing personal experiences at the same time (Jessica Abel, Julie Doucet, Leanne Franson). In their diversity, the ways of living
presented in the comics reflect changes in the self-awareness of women and the changing ways of dealing with the politics of identity in recent decades. Even the titles, Tits & Clits in the seventies or Girlhero, Actiongirl and
Slutburger in the nineties reflect the goal of defining the depiction and representation of women beyond stereotypes in the way concepts and terminology are taken over and reinterpreted.

The exhibition offers a glimpse into women's production of comics in the USA, and Trina Robbins stands for this emancipatory intention with her entire life story. She is one of the protagonists of the underground comix
movement. She published her first comics in the early sixties in New York (East Village Other). In 1968 she moved to San Francisco, the birthplace of underground comix, where she continuously collaborated in creating
networks and platforms for women's production of comics, for example as founder of the Wimmen's Comic Collective and as editor of the anthology It Aint Me Baby. Women's Liberation. These collectives provided the
framework for the first comics series that dealt with feminist topics like abortion, coming out, and sexuality. In order to prove that even comics that do not reduce their female characters to full-breasted sex wonders can be
commercially successful, Trina Robbins drew and authored stories like Meet Misty, GoGirl and contributed stories to Barbie, which provided especially young girls with an alternative to the supermen and superheroes and their
female appendages spawned by the male fantasies of power so favored by the industry. For instance, the mother and daughter team of the Go-Girl comics drawn by Ann Timmons not only battles against evil, but also with the
problem that super powers and the ability to fly neither make them rich nor help them to win a relatively commonplace flame.

Trina Robbins has published a large number of books and magazines, including From Girls to Grrrlz - A History of American Women's Comics from Teens to Zines (1999), an extensive documentation of the women cartoonist
scene that she co-founded and strongly influenced. This book became the basis for Robbins' first presentations in Europe, which took place in 2001 at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and in conjunction with the exhibition First Story -
Women Building/New Narratives for the 21st Century in Porto. Her most recent publication, The Great Women Cartoonists (2001), forms the point of departure for the exhibition at the Secession.

For the catalogue comic book published on the exhibition, She draws Comics, Trina Robbins invited 28 colleagues to produce a comic book together, reflecting and representing different positions along a script drafted by
Robbins. "The result I think, is the visual voice of Cartoonist Everywoman between covers. We are here, and we draw comics" (Trina Robbins, March 2002)

In order to emphasize the publicizing aspect of the exhibition, the graphic artists team of Toledo i Dertschei was invited to design the exhibition. The graphical supporting structure that they developed for this exhibition equally
makes use of the material of paper and the characteristic typographical elements of comic, integrating the broad spectrum of styles and stories into a reading theater.

Artists in the exhibition include:
Jessica Abel, Katherine Arnoldi, Isabella Bannermann, Valerie Barclay, Donna Barr, Alison Bechdel, June Brigman, Lee Binswanger, Ariel Bordeaux, Paige Braddock, Odin Burvick, Joyce Chin, Anna Maria Cool, Leela Corman,
Julia Green, Diane DiMassa, Colleen Doran, Julie Doucet, Debbie Drechsler, Jan Eliot, Joyce Farmer, Mary Fleener, Fly, Ellen Forney, Ramona Fraydon, Leanne Franson, Phoebe Gloeckner, Roberta Gregory, Ethel Hays, Marian
Henley, Lea Hernandez, Joan Hilty, Fran Hopper, Dorothy Hughes, Sabrina Jones, Molly Kiely, Fay King, Virginia Krausmann, Kathryn LeMieux, Caryn Louise Leschen, Marty Links, Sandra Bell Lundy, Lee Marrs, Barbara
(Willy) Mendes, Dale Messick, Martha Orr, Nina Paley, Rina Piccolo, Lark Pien, Stephanie Piro, Barb Rausch, Lily Renée, Trina Robbins, Sharon Rudahl, Mary Schmich, Ariel Schrag, Kelly Seda, Marie Severin, Christine
Shields, Barbara Slate, Leslie Sternberg, Hilda Terry, Anne Timmons, Carol Tyler, Penny Moran Van Horn, Lauren Weinstein, Mary Wilshire

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

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