Constantin Luser challenges us to enter the maze of his imagination: he corners us against the wall of our indifference and confronts us with the unavoidable question whether we will ever be able to escape. But escape what? A portrait.

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In any case, it tames the wildness of our thinking, which means that when it happens –ever so rarely- the hegemony of the concept is erased and for a moment we are cured of our illness separating us from time – our rationality. more »

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Esra Ersen is interested in the formation of identity and its transformation in different contexts or power structures. Her work “Carousel” shown in the exhibition tanzimat (Augarten Contemporary 21.1.2010 - 16.5.2010) was produced with high school students from Cologne. Ersen asked the students to model Turkish heads out of clay.

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Gulsun Karamustafa is a contemporary artist and film maker from Turkey. In 2009 she was the artist in residence at the Augarten Contemporary in Vienna. For the exhibition tanzimat (Augarten Contemporary 21.1.2010 - 16.5.2010) she produced a new piece entitled “modernity unveiled/interweaving histories”. In the interview with CYA Karamustafa talks about this piece.

When a tree falls down in the forest and noone witnesses it, did it really happen? When an artist makes a sculpture on top of a mountain and noone sees it, is it really art? The artist Christian Eisenberger does not like to limit himself to the gallery or the art space. When the impulse moves him, he is content to spontaneously create something when and where he wants, and then to let it run its course. Such is the case with his ice sculptures or his sugar cube towers that are left in their natural environments to melt or be overrun by ants. Such tendencies towards land art-influenced pieces demonstrate both Eisenberger’s methods of inspiration as well as his attitude toward art-world restrictions such as properly designated venues or commissioned works. Eisenberger first gained attention by his impromptu displays of cardboard figures on city streets and art fair grounds. The gesture questioned the predispositions of viewers and so-called “proper” venues.

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The need to create art is a complex one. On the one hand, one could argue that art is a cry for attention, a narcissistic calling. On the other, art is a form of play, a way to satisfy one’s childlike predisposition towards drawing, building, making stuff. Eisenberger creates works that want to be acknowledged, but at the same time, Eisenberger hides behind his work while simultaneously daring the viewer to look away. In a recent exhibition, he took cover within a bear suit made entirely out of packing tape, spray painting cryptic messages and scrawlings within a makeshift four-walled cardboard space. The set-up both invited the viewer to utilize unstable aids such as a ladder or a wobbly table to get a peek at his antics, but the effort was rewarded by his playful displays and offerings of snacks. In the end, the structure was challenge to and deconstruction of the static “white cube” gallery space by literally converting the viewer from a passive to an active role. It was all part of the “game” that Eisenberger had meticulously set up, at once inviting and defiant.

But this is not to say that Eisenberger’s approach is childish. The bear suit is a further development of a series of works involving countless cocoons that the artist created and then shed by wrapping himself in packing tape and then cutting himself out of the mummy-like figures. Such projects satisfy his need to hide and yet be seen, and the resulting shells, which he then displayed in various contexts, remain testaments to his observations on performance, corporeality, and materiality. Further use of ephemeral, “trashy” materials such as packing tape, cardboard boxes, or even his own sperm, express his commitment to spontaneity and his rebellion against material worth. His performances—for example, when he dressed up as kind of faux suicide-bomber clown and walked the streets of Vienna and London—often smack of insouciance, but, like a child and even more like an artist, his desire to engage is very real. (jn)

This artist portrait was realised with the kind support of the CastYourArt foundation.

Since the beginning of 2008, Open Space, the Center for Art Projects, has been in full swing in the Vienna art world with its ambitious program. Open Space’s repertoire of exploring artistic variety and multilayeredness corresponds to its self-conception as an open space for international networking. Under the direction of Gulsen Bal, Open Space has realised a marathon of exhibitions with a density of international participation that is unusual for Vienna.

Last year the art space opened in Lassingleithnerplatz in Taborstreet with an exhibition curated by the Vienna-based artist, Fatih Aydogdu. Aydogdu, who artistically feels at home somewhere between the categories of installation, video, graphic art, and music, and who also had boundary experiences in his life as a geopolitically sensitized migrant, made the boundary signal the conceptual starting point of his interdiscplinary exhibition.

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Ten artists and artist collectives followed the request of the theme of the boundary signal. CastYourArt visited the exhibition at Open Space recording sounds as fields of experimentation and boundary signals beyond the act of speaking and music, as well as artistic positionings emerging from historically political moments in relation to current events. (wh/jn)

Beauty. Order. Cleanliness. Purity. Perfection. To all of these coveted qualities, hair is a threat, a flaw, a disturbance. When someone is well-groomed, we describe them as “not having a hair on her head out of place”, signifying that hair is something to be put into its place, to be kept under control. There are many places where hair is not supposed to be: stuck on your sweater, floating in your soup, appearing on a projected film frame, beyond the acceptable areas and lengths on one’s body, etc. And so, when we are confronted with its appearance in a work of art, we are unsure: do the same rules apply here? Should I be delighted or disgusted? As always, the use of unconventional materials in art forces us to make up our own minds.

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In her art work, Fiene Scharp, based in Berlin, works regularly with materials such as hair, grease, and wax. She describes her focus as being “the moment of touching in which the touch-er and the touch-ee become aware of themselves and the other.” In a primarily visual context such as art exhibitions, touching is often forbidden, but perception is not. Scharp’s use of hair challenges these boundaries by placing the viewer in a position somewhere between attraction and repulsion. A 100-cm cube composed completely of human hair somehow knocks our perception for a loop: questions arise as to from where the hair originated and whether it is too much while, at the same time, impulses are suppressed to reach out and stroke it. Otherwise conventional forms such as delicate weaves or graphs on paper shock us when we realize that they are made of hairs. Carefully placed hairs on ordinary food items such as butter or a lemon provoke us with their violation of propriety.

Scharp uses the video format to bring her fixation with capturing this complicated relation to the sense of touch to the next level. Tiny hairs between an index finger and thumb bristle audibly as they act as a barrier between their contact on one video, two hands slowly polish a rough sheet of ice into a smooth, reflective surface in another. Although we as viewers are still limited in our access to the works to the senses of sight and sound, the sense of touch is the focus, and, once again, cannot be taken for granted. For this purpose, Scharp refers to another all-too-human material, skin, which she describes as “a metaphor for the state of being separate, as well as a membrane.” References to hair and skin confront us with our own corporeality and challenge us to place such normally mundane materials in a new context, not only in art, but in life as well. (jn)

Violins are often only spoken about when they are stolen. However, before they can be stolen, they have to be built, and this is the aspect on which we focus in this podcast.

The “New Viennese Violins“ Association came about based on an idea from Christoph Schachner, to bring professional and amateur musicians closer to high-quality, newly manufactured instruments. These offer a better alternative to the mystified, often overestimated old instruments. “As a result of violins being treated like antiques, a myth has developed around them which is often incomprehensible. Hence, a new violin often costs only a quarter or fifth of what an old violin of similar quality costs“, says Nupi Jenner, a member of the association.

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The production of violins is a complex experience, a craft which involves an intuitive process. The knowledge required for the selection of the wood that is suitable for building stringed instruments developed over many generations. The cover is frequently made from spruce and the remaining parts from maple. It can be very difficult to find the right kind of spruce to build the instruments, even in a dense forest. For larger instruments, like the cello or double bass, willow and poplar trees are also used. The selection from a wood dealer who specializes in instrument-making is left up to the discretion of each instrument-maker.

In order to develop instruments of equal high quality, it is necessary to keep the parameters as consistent as possible. Nevertheless, in the end, each instrument has its own character. Achieving consistency in the production can be almost impossible, even when scientific procedures and computerized measuring techniques are utilized. Thus, the virtuosity of the violin craft always remains a bit mysterious.

Since objective assessments of a certain quality level are difficult to establish, the purchase depends very much on the personal approach of the musician, his/her sensitivity to tone, physical requirements, financial options, and the kind of advise and maintenance he/she expects from the violin-maker.

Once a year, those who would like to produce, play, and/or listen to the “New Viennese Violins“ gather at the Radio Kulturhaus in Vienna. In the context of instrument presentation, the partly newly-built stringed instruments of renowned musicians are played. There, one can directly encounter violin-makers, musicians, and experts involved with the new stringed instruments and become convinced of their sound quality in person.
(jk/jn).

Centuries do not have clear boundaries, rather, they flow into each other in the same way that the years which they are made up of do. The transition period in which the nineteenth and twentieth century collapsed into each other was called the fin de siècle. The fact that something was coming to an end was a modern perspective.

In 1918, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Wagner, and Koloman Moser all died within a year. Accompanying them was the fall of turn-of-the-century, successfully up-and-coming, modern Austrian art. So what remained in terms of artistic progress? For one thing, there was Oskar Kokoschka. He had moved to Dresden and fled—as did a majority of the intellectual and artistic heavyweights—upon the rise of the National Socialists: first to Prague, and then to London. And then there was Herbert Boeckl, who stayed behind. This starting point was not exactly ideal for the development of the painter: an authoritarian, conservative, anti-modern mood prevailed in Austria, along with a shortage of moral support from colleagues.

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Towards the end of the turn of the century, Herbert Boeckl’s works were close to those of Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele: expressionistic. Over the course of time, however, his painting took many turns. University professor and grandchild Matthias Boeckl counts five direction changes: first, there were the traditional atmospheric paintings of his early Carinthian years, then his move to secessionism with his line paintings, then expressionism, then his pastose phase of expressionistic realism, and finally, his abstract colorfield painting, starting from the end of the Second World War. Boeckl himself always rejected a categorization according to creative periods, rather, he saw his work in relation to motifs. Boeckl sharpened his view of nature and humanity, of the essence of existence, of the necessary form, in his portraits and landscapes. Both, according to Agnes Husslein-Arco, director of the Belvedere and granddaughter of the artist, proved to be persistent motifs throughout his stylistically diverse work.

The intrinsic, the enduring, the fundamentally valid: this is what Herbert Boeckl wanted to maintain as a painter. This objective did not, however, make him conservative, rather it made him an advocate of modernity. He experimented to figure out which new possibilities on offer would preserve that which was essential. However, his focus on the everlasting probably corresponded to his religious nature. At the beginning of his career, Boeckl had already completed a fresco in the Church of Maria Saal, which locals considered provocative and which therefore remained covered for years. At the very end of his life, he created one of his most important works, “The Apocalypse”, in the Angels’ Chapel at the Seckau Monastery.

Boeckl was committed to the ideals and style directions that modernity brought out, and he shaped the development of the Austrian art scene as a director and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, as well as as a prominent member of the Austrian Art Senate. He supported the appointment of Fritz Wotrubas and Albert Paris Gütersloh as professors at the Academy and counted among his students some of the most important artists of the postwar generation—including Maria Lassnig and Alfred Hrdlicka.

On the occasion of the retrospective of Boeckl’s works at the Lower Belvedere in Vienna, CastYourArt spoke with both curators of the exhibition, Agnes Husslein-Arco and Matthias Boeckl, in Herbert Boeckl’s studio, which has remained virtually untouched since his death in 1966. Accompanying the exhibition is a 500-page catalog which includes a list of Boeckl’s works. (wh/jn)

The exhibition is in view at the Lower Belvedere in Vienna until January 31, 2010.

Faced with the challenge of representing a recently merged corporate collection comprised of over 60,000 works, curator Walter Guadagnini went back to the basic questions concerning art: Why is art important? What role does it play in society? How does it relate to our everyday life? As the art community becomes ever more global, how can we encompass the vastly diverse range of art that is presented to us?

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The exhibition, “PastPresentFuture”, at the Bank Austria Kunstforum, is an introduction to the UniCredit Group art collection, which now includes the combined collections of all the individual banks that have merged into UniCredit, including UniCredit in Italy, HypoVereinsbank in Germany, and Bank Austria, thereby making it one of the most valuable corporate collections in Europe.

Such a massive task might invite opportunities for grandstanding pricey acquisitions, or showing off pieces from well-known names. However, this exhibition chooses instead to cast a dynamic, multilayered glance at the past, present, and future, and takes advantage of a voluminous, eclectic collection by featuring pieces which create dialogues, reveal unexpected parallels, and take us back to the way art relates to everyday life, its original and fundamental raison d’etre.

Instead of taking a chronological approach, the exhibition is divided into sections that juxtapose pieces from diverse periods into various thematic groups. In representing a collection that encompasses so many periods, genres, mediums, countries, and artists, it is striking how it is the subjects which are covered that bring all these works to a mutual level. Faces, landscapes, objects: whether they are depicted in a 17th century Italian Baroque painting or a 20th century British found-art installation, these pieces still speak to each other as well as to us.

Whether we are looking at the past through the present or from the present toward the future, “every work of art in the moment it is created is contemporary”, says Guadagnini, and by demonstrating how common threads exist between ancient and contemporary works, this collection shows us how the universal and enduring concerns of society, are, and will always be reflected in great and true art. (jn)

The exhibition “PastPresentFuture - Highlights of the UniCredit Group Collection” are on display at the Bank Austria Kunsforum until January 10th, 2010.

In this hi-tech age, the relationship between artist and viewer is a complicated one. There has always been the tacit agreement of suspension of disbelief between them, that what is presented may be altered or manipulated, but that the intention of the artist is to reveal some kind of truth nonetheless. Digital technology provides the means to doctor photos in every context, be it in advertising, art, or even private use. We seem to have all come to the agreement that when it comes to visual media, there is always room for improvement.

The artist Helmut Grill worked for many years in the field of photographic manipulation. In the early years, the necessary equipment for this venture would take up an entire room. Now, Photoshop is a standard application on every computer—almost no photo goes unretouched. Those with advanced skills in this craft are among the highest-paid in the media industry. But despite our awareness of this sophisticated process, we still engage in the game of believing what we see, or at least enjoying the challenge of thinking we can still determine what’s real or what’s not.

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As an artist, Helmut Grill likes to push this engagement to the limit. Instead of using the medium of digital alteration to render images more palatable and easier on the eye, Grill creates images that disturb, provoke, and call into question our complicity when it comes to visual mediation. In the “Alphapeople” series, portraits of faces assembled out of mismatched features question our presumptions about conventional beauty; the “Arstarte” series positions soft-porn shots against a backdrop of current war scenes, rupturing the seductive hard-sell of such quintessentially commercial images; “Relations” is an interactive series of visual comparisons in which typically modified proportions in photos can be physically displayed through a mouse click, demonstrating the arbitrary yet significant influence of slight alterations in dimensions—a technique used on a regular basis in advertising.

In his latest works, Grill has moved on from human figures to houses and landscapes. Like his human subjects, none of Grill’s residential subjects actually exist. Pasted together from various components, these dwellings are situated in a strange, surreal universe that attracts and repels the viewer simultaneously. Their facades are swathed with multifarious messages in the form of neon signs, posters, graffiti, etc., which suggest an intriguing, potentially dangerous world within. Helmut Grill was inspired to take this project one step further—moving for the first time into three-dimensional territory—by realizing these imaginary structures into actual models. As with the doctored photos, the imagination is stimulated—for better or for worse. (jn)

Thanks to the Gallery Suppan for permission to film at the exhibition “share your dreams - young art from the EU”.