APPROPRIATION | INTERPICTORIALITY | PART 2 - galerie | michaela

29.5. - 5.9.2015
APPROPRIATION | INTERPICTORIALITY | PART 2
Vernissage: Thursday 28th May 2015 at 4 pm
WHERE: Galerie Michaela Stock, Schleifmühlgasse 18, 1040 Vienna
In the frame of Vienna Gallery Weekend 29.5.-31.5.2105

Patrick Baumüller, Johanna Binder, Max Ernst, Luiza Margan, Hans Kotter, Man Ray, Milija Pavićević, Viktors Svikis, Marko Zink

Without a doubt, our living and working conditions have significantly changed over the past years, influenced by societal, political and technological developments and visual references to already existing pictures have become part of the art history discourse. A work of art, thus, always transcends beyond itself as it refers to already existing objects, be it consciously or subconsciously. The various strategies of appropriation are thereby conceptually conceived by selected artists from different generations, cultural and geographic backgrounds.

The exhibition APPROPRIATION shall not only shed some light on diverging artistic appropriations such as quotations, plagiarism, copies and transformations, but shall also analyze their models, providing information on globalization and the far-reaching changes of artists and their environment.
An intense glimpse into the many layers of meaning and imagination, which have accumulated over time, as well as into current practices and discourses dealing with the appropriation of art, shall be articulated with different media such as graphics, painting, photos, sculpture, and light installations.

The exhibition APPRORIATION consists of two parts, the first one presenting a two-week performance program, which is followed by the second part, entitled APPROPRIATION |INTERPICTORIALITY | PART 2. Both exhibitions are complemented by lectures and discussions on the topic of appropriation by artists and renowned scientists in Cooperation with Bildrecht | Bildraum07.

The analogue black-and-white photos of Man Ray, entitled Picasso and transatlantic, show different types of appropriation. Only in combination with their titles, these Dadaistic photos stemming from the 1920s turned into "pictures", as it is the title that, similar to the inscriptions in Duchamp's ready-mades, leads the observer to the object, but only after some detours. The photo, thus, became an integral part of an optic-literary construction. Man Ray took a photo of Picasso and declared it to be a work of art. In transatlantic, banal objects such as cigarette butts, burnt down matches and torn paper are pictured, and the title makes direct reference to the ocean liner and Man Ray's exploration of his own arrival in Paris in 1921. Indirectly, the photo also refers to the famous piece of his friend, Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage.
Man Ray's ready-made Cadeau is a literal allusion to the Flatiron skyscraper in New York and, in a Duchamp-like style, elevates a simple object of everyday use, as an objet trouvé, to a work of art.

Max Ernst's aquatint etching Invitation au voyage shows a place that cannot definitely be identified with a red key plate, thereby picking the voyeuristic aspect as a central theme and, at the same time, referring to two models: on the one hand, Duchamp's installation Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau, 2° le gaz d'éclairage . . . (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas . . . ), and, on the other hand, to the architecture of the swimming pool in the shape of a keyhole, which was conceptualized by his wife Dorothea Tanning. Different to Duchamp, Max Ernst poeticizes the pleasure of observing, which is now directed at the journey towards the infinitive.

The appropriation in Milija Pavićević's collage Velázquez-Malevich is much more evident.
"Extinction and nihilism as a challenge of all being, but also as spiritual entity of a metaphysical perspective, in which the visible may not be replaced by experience - later on, this led Pavićević to intensively deal with the oeuvre of Kazimir Malevich, resulting in the adaption of significant works of the history of art. In the exhibition, this period is represented by a revised version of a Velázquez reproduction".

The list of copies and counterfeits made of Albrecht Dürer's Young Hare is long. Young Latvian artist Viktors Svikis caricatures in The Trap the often reproduced desire for an intact (art) world, but the meticulously drawn hare seems to be escaping that sensation. His homage is a skilled play with tradition, materials and signatures.

Patrick Baumüller's hand-colored screen printing Lockvogelangebot pimp quotes Andy Warhol's central artistic gesture: serial picture editing, including both pictures of pictures as well as the representation of consumer goods such as sugar and milk.

Hans Kotter's light-kinetic work Explosion shows an imitation of an illusionistic work by Op art artist Victor Vasarely. Kotter expands the visual irritation in his light object by using colors, forms and lines. "While Vasarely, still entirely in the spirit of Minimal Art, had wished to ban meaning from art and employed his formal aesthetics as a pointer to the limitations of human perception, the semantic and therefore the narrative return in Kotter's work – which is characteristic, among other things, of the post-modern generation."

Already back in 1964, Dan Flavin proves in a primary picture that light itself can become a picture. In 1965, François Morellet, one of the most significant representatives of geometric abstraction, asserts that the source of light itself and not its reflection shall be regarded as a plastic raw material, and starts, in the tradition of Dan Flavin, to interlace his work with neon tubes. Young Salzburg artist Johanna Binder makes reference to these light artists and dissolves the classic oil painting from the context of two-dimensionality to create a light installation and, at the same time, change spatial perception with light.

Croatian artist Luiza Margan is interested in the question of representation and description of power in public space per se. For her series Public Tales, she has arranged the tails of different equestrian statues showing Austrian emperors to moustaches. The story of the "city moustaches" is depicted in form of a silkscreen print, with the reference to the appropriated potentates.

According to Susan Sontag , photography can be seen as an objet trouvé, an incidental detail of this world, of a restless surplus and throwaway society, and, at the same time, may make things appear as something that they are not, which also describes a general characteristic of appropriation. This is exactly where Marko Zink picks up the thread with his series Fleisch and, in his photo collages Thebiggerthebetter, questions the content of truth of the pictured David Beckham. He primarily deals with the relation of a changed reality and actual reality. Pictures of various lifestyle magazines are combined with his own photos. The human being, who likes to put himself in the center, is only left to be part of the picture.

PROGRAM VIENNA GALLERY WEEKEND 2015

Friday, 29th May, from 5 – 6:30 pm
Lectures and discussions on the various methods of appropriation in the visual arts with
Dr. Christoph Zuschlag/ art history and art education
Dr. Judith Elisabeth Weiss/ art history, ethnology
Dr. Philip M. Jakober/ intellectual property lawyer, musician
moderator: Manisha Jodathy/journalist
WHERE: Bildraum 07, Burggasse 7-9, 1070 Vienna

Saturday, 30th May, from 2 – 3:30 pm
Round Table: Performance – perception and documentation
Dr. Eva Badura-Triska/ mumok curator
Dr. Guido Isekenmeier/ english philology, computational linguistics, computer science
Mag. Günter Schönberger/ managing director of Bildrecht Österreich
Mag. Bernhard Cella/artist, curator
WHERE: Galerie Michaela Stock, Schleifmühlgasse 18, 1040 Vienna

Saturday, 30th May, from 5 – 7 pm
APPROPRIATION Cocktail, Galerie Michaela Stock

APPROPRIATION | INTERPICTORIALITY | PART 2

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