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9/9/2009

Two exhibitions

Wiener Secession, Wien

MICOL ASSAËL
ФОМУШКА

In her first solo show in Austria, in the main room of the Secession, the Italian artist Micol Assaёl is presenting large-format wall drawings from her new series Красный Октябрь (Red October) along with an installation consisting of the eponymous machine ФОМУШКА (Fomuška), that generates an electrostatic field with the aid of steam, and two additional industrial ventilators.

Based on a passionate fascination with scientific theories and physical principles such as electrostatics, gravitation and wind power, Micol Assaёl amplifies natural or physical phenomena in many of her installations. Her minimal arrangements play with the spectrum of sensory perceptions and allow unusual experiences, that in some cases involve unpleasant and disconcerting aspects.

The industrial fans confront visitors in a cyclical rhythm with a powerful current of air and motor noise, while the centrally positioned work ФОМУШКА charges nearby human bodies with static electricity. The form and function of the machine, developed by Assaёl in close cooperation with Moscow's Elektroenergeticevsky Institute, go back to a Russian test facility for simulating lightning discharges. One of the tangible effects of ФОМУШКА is that it literally causes your hair to stand on end and that you get small electric shocks when you touch other people or objects.

Her installation provokes the psychological tension of an unspecified threat, created by the interplay of invisible elementary forces and effects acting directly on the body. In this way Assaёl refers to the potential horrors of technologies; at the same time she forges an aesthetic link to industrial apparatuses and the mysterious power of immaterial energy.

Similarly to the installation, the wall drawings Красный Октябрь exhibit a complex tension between heavy and light, force and sensitivity. Printouts of electric circuit diagrams, that Assaёl discovered in the disused Moscow chocolate factory Красный Октябрь, are superimposed with black, biomorphic ink drawings. The latter have a peculiar balanced figuration that marries the opaque nature of the ink, that gives the impression of a solid object, with the lightness of an organically flowing form.

Micol Assaёl (*1979 in Rome) lives and works in Rome and Moscow.
Solo shows (selection)
2009 ФОМУШКА, Secession, Wien; Inner Disorder, Johann König, Berlin; ZERO…, Milano; ФОМУШКА, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; Gakona, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Fundacja Galerii Foksal, Warzawa; 2008 Altrove – Elsewhere, Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna, Roma; Porta di concentrazione gravitazionale, Edicola Notte, Roma; 2007 Johann König, Berlin; Chizhevsky Lessons, Kunsthalle Basel; 2005 Free Fall in the Vortex of Time, ZERO…, Milano; 2004 D-segni, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino; Sleepnessless, Galleria Bonomo, Bari; 2002 La Folie de la Villa Medicis, Villa Medici, Accademia di Francia, Roma; 2001 Galleria Studio 34, Salerno.
Group shows (selection)
2009 Second Hand, Engholm Engelhorn Galerie, Wien; Cheasing Napoleon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Short Circuits, Peter Blum Gallery, New York; 2008 In living contact, 28th Bienal de São Paulo, Arte italiana fra tradizione e rivoluzione 1968-2008, Palazzo Grassi, Venezia; Revolution – forms that turn, 16th Biennale of Sydney; Gnam, Roma; ... 5 minutes later, KW - Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; After Nature, New Museum, New York; 2007 La parola nell'arte. Ricerche d'avanguardia nel '900. Dal Futurismo ad oggi attraverso le Collezioni del Mart, Mart, Rovereto; Schmerz, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Méditerranée orientale, Carré d’Art, Nîmes, Silenzio. Una mostra da ascoltare, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino; Luce di pietra, Palazzo Farnese, Roma; 2006 My Private, Centre International d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière; Of mice and men, 4. Berlin Biennale; 2005 T-1 La sindrome di Pantagruel, Torino; Sempre un po’ più lontano, Biennale di Venezia - 51. Esposizione Internazionale di Venezia; Bidibidobidiboo, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino; Work Time/Life Time/Material Time, Reykjavik Art Festival; Radio Days, CTP of The Appel Foundation, Amsterdam; Non Toccare la Donna Bianca, Castel dell’Ovo, Napoli; Dialectics of hope-1, Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Former Lenin Museum, Moskwa.

The work ФОМУШКА has been produced in cooperation with the Kunsthalle Fridericianum and the Museion Bozen.

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CINEPLEX. Experimental films from Austria
Selected by Norbert Pfaffenbichler and Lotte Schreiber
with works by Dariusz Kowalski, Annja Krautgasser, Johann Lurf, Dietmar Offenhuber, Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Ben Pointeker, and Lotte Schreiber

CINEPLEX presents an exemplary selection of recent Austrian experimental films in an architecture specifically developed for this exhibition that extends across three floors at the Secession. The exhibition project aims to counteract the marginal reception of Austria’s extraordinarily lively experimental-film scene in the art world and to build a bridge between the static visual arts and film, two disciplines that largely exist side by side.

Norbert Pfaffenbichler and Lotte Schreiber, who are active both as artists and as filmmakers, have selected seven films that share a focus on the “filmic” in film. The works engage the fundamental conditions of the medium―its history, its techniques and technologies, the iconography of film, and dramaturgic conventions. Taking up the tradition of seminal Austrian experimental films created in the 1950s and 1960s by Peter Kubelka, Kurt Kren, and others, they also lend new topicality to it, not least by employing and addressing digital technology.

Whereas the lively discussion in recent years about the ways in which filmic works are presented in the art context largely focused on installational aspects of cinematographic technology, Pfaffenbichler/Schreiber propose an almost contrary approach. They have developed an exhibition architecture consisting of projection rooms that are completely black inside and outside; installed as spaces within the space, they explicitly gesture toward the cinematic apparatus. The black of the wallpaper is punctuated only on the entrance walls by white letters that spell basic information about each film. In the fashion of multiplex theaters, the exhibition shows a single film per black box, affording viewers the linear perception of individual films characteristic of the cinema as well as parallel receptions directed by the individual visitor’s course through the exhibition.

Filmmuseum
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Austrian Filmmuseum will host an event on Monday, 9/14/2009 starting at 7:30pm. The premiere of Zwölf Boxkämpfer jagen Viktor quer über den großen Sylter Deich 140 9, a film by Johann Lurf, and boston buzz by stadtmusik (Sam Auinger, Dietmar Offenhuber, Hannes Strobl) will be followed by a panel discussion about Role Playing with Film: Cube, Box, Cinema, Museum featuring Josef Dabernig (artist; Secession, Vienna), Alexander Horwath (Austrian Filmmuseum, Vienna), Mike Sperlinger (LUX, London), and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (Arsenal, Berlin) and moderated by Reinhard Braun (steirischer herbst, Graz).

Catalogue
The catalogue accompanying the exhibition (in German and English) will include an introduction by Norbert Pfaffenbichler, a conversation between Rike Frank, Norbert Pfaffenbichler, and Lotte Schreiber, an essay by Olaf Möller, and brief descriptions of the films.

The Secession is supported by:
Erste Bank – Partner of the Secession
Wien Kultur
Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur
Friends of the Secession

For further information and photographic material please contact:
Urte Schmitt-Ulms
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34 presse@secession.at

Image: Micola Assael, Fomuska, 2009, Photo Nils Klinger

Opening sept 10th 2009

Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Thuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

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