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.

It is an interesting fact that the fez, the iconic Turkish hat that was originally instituted as a “modernizing” symbol for the Ottoman Empire in 1826, was later banned in Turkey in 1925, also as part of a “modernizing” reform. It is also interesting to note that after the invention of synthetic dyes, the main manufacturer of the fez—which up until that point had been colored with native berry juice—was located in Austria, that is, until it was boycotted by Turkey in 1908, as part of yet another reaction to modernization. The “history” of this simple, cliché-ridden object demonstrates the complexity of historical constructs not only of the Ottoman Empire, but within the grand narrative of modernity overall.

As shown through this minor but telling symbolic object, history is not a clear-cut dichotomy of oppositions between “East and West”, the oppressed and emancipated, “natives” and “outsiders”, or “modernized” and “un-modernized”. Instead, history is a series of intersections, clashes, meetings, and interruptions between elements coming from many different directions, a condition that requires us to always keep in mind the agenda, the perspective, the position of every historical narrative. In German, the same word, “Geschichte”, is used for two separate English terms, “story” and “history”—yet another indication that the “story”, the constructed, fictional element, can never be taken out of the “history”.

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In the exhibition, tanzimat, at the Augarten Contemporary, the conflicted symbol of the fez appears in the work, Carousel, by the Turkish artist, Esra Ersen, for which she recruited students at a high school in Cologne (from various backgrounds, including Turkish) to create clay models of Turkish heads, and the work, In the Eyes of a Mute, by the Romanian artist, Viktor Man, which juxtaposes a comic-like drawing of Turks he drew as a child against conceptual pieces addressing the same period in history. We also find these fez-donning depictions of Turks in the work, Trophies, by the Austrian artists, Franz Kapfer, which in this case, are not children’s portrayals, but rather reproductions of trophies that are still displayed in the Spanish Riding School today.

The exhibition, tanzimat, is named for a period of reformation in the Ottoman Empire which occurred from 1839 to 1876, and was notable for its various efforts towards modernization, which included the enhancement of civil liberties and the establishment of technological, financial, and social reforms. The term is not capitalized for the title of the exhibition—as opposed to the term for the historical period—an indication that the original meaning of the word, “arrangement” or “rearrangement”, is even more significant to the exhibition than the historical period. Artists from various Middle European backgrounds, Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Austrian, were invited to challenge and confront this process of rearrangement within their own histories. Developed in parallel to the major Prince Eugen of Savoy exhibition at the Lower Belvedere, tanzimat examines the continual reorganization of historical constructs and devices that underscore the neverending project of modernity. (jn)

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)

Irene Andessner began her career with painting. She first studied with Emilio Vedova, one of the most important Italian Informal painters, at the Academia di Belli Arti in Venice, and then with Max Weiler and Arnulf Rainer—also a representative of the Informal—at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Andessner encountered paintings by the Italian Renaissance painter, Sofonisba Anguissola, for the first time at an exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The self-portraits fascinated her, and after an attempt to paint herself as Anguissola, she turned to the fields of photography and video art, in which she explores contemporary forms of the self-dramatization.

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Andessner’s portrait works are revivals of historical personalities that utilize memory as a source of reactivation: Marlene Dietrich, Electress Dorothea of Brandenburg, Wanda von Sacher Masoch, Irene Harand, Barbara Strozzi, Hedy Lamarr, Ida Pfeiffer, Maria Sibylle Merian, Barbara Blomberg, Gwen John, Constanze Mozart, Angelika Kaufmann, Frida Kahlo. The artist portrays over fifty personalities, primarily women, through role performance. The selection of her protagonists follows strict criteria: they are strong and politically involved women who were inventive, creative, aggressive, intelligent, and remarkable, who made an impression through their personalities or their approaches to life, however, often enough to be displaced into the lower and hidden ranks behind a male-dominated world and historiography.

Andessner is interested in how women have dealt with themselves throughout various centuries. In order to develop this approach, she investigates the life of her subjects, seeks out portraits of them, and then selects one of these picture-worthy moments as a starting point for her artistic embodiments. Through the conversion, the artist reflects on the models as social figures, as fictions of women as holy, untouchable superstars, as suffering, dominating, or promiscuous, and reenacts them partly faithfully, and partly as a reinterpretation with materials from our own time.

Andessner’s self-dramatizations take place either in the studio or in photographic situations that are recognizable as sets. Large polaroids are taken there. According to Andessner, the material was always important to her, since she also wanted to take a painterly approach to photography, which the polaroid material makes possible. When her self-dramatizations are done as videos, they also have a performative character and integrate others into the revivification.
When the artist mixes among people as Ursula K.—a scarred, depressed woman—in suburban bars, laundromats, and public saunas, or, in the live-streaming project, “Maternoster”, rides up and down the traveling lift compartments in a paternoster in the headquarters of the Federation of Austrian Industry with heads of business as Alma Mater, Maria von Nazareth, Mutter Courage (Anna Fierling), and Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, she approaches these self-dramatizations as real performances. Her restaged self then becomes evident through actual existing circumstances and thereby eliminates the boundaries of who she is. (wh/jn)

The artist is occupied not only with the creation of images, but also their demise. With a view on that which lies between, how can one capture and demonstrate this? The medium, not the object, is the focus of Edgar Lissel’s artistic challenge. His work experiments with unconventional mediums, investigating the process of producing images.

Life comes into being and then passes away. What lies between expresses a need to be captured by the imagemaking process. People, in principle, are occupied with images, according to Lissel. The creation of images provides the possibility of visualizing oneself. Whoever leaves behind an image of oneself chronicles his/her existence, reflecting him/herself in this gesture.

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This artistic engagement with visual self-verification led Edgar Lissel to camera obscura photography. Used as a tracing instrument in the eighteenth century, the pinhole camera has been considered the most direct way to gradually depart from outer reality on a photo-sensitive background. Light and time have remained key terms in the work of the artist who, through his camera obscura work, puts the authenticity of pictures under closer examination.

In a world in which complicated means and time-saving procedures have the reputation of producing that which is artificial, unnatural, and false, the slowness and immediacy of image development in “primitive” obscura photography seems to authentically capture that which is allowed to develop and pass away in life.

Museum display cases, vans, and entire flats are converted by pinhole cameras. But the image development that Lissel organizes not only documents exterior life. The space in which the image of the outside world develops enters the picture. Outlines of articles remaining in the flats burn themselves gradually as photograms on the photo-sensitive material, which record and reflect the development space and process of the image.

Lissel poses the question of how this process of formation allows the development process to lend itself to a kind of existential personal testimony of life. His photographic procedure transforms itself into a biographical one. From that point on, it is bacteria which forms these temporary pictures and duplicates them.

Lissel works with scientists on these bacterial images in order to understand the bacterial transformation process and to be able to manage them and make them artistically functional. Cyanobacteria, that is, the original bacteria that was already in existence three and a half million years ago and were responsible for the first deoxygenation in the primordial world soup, becomes a medium, in the same way tubes of paint and mixing pallets are for other artists.

In the series, “Selbstzeugnisse” (“personal testimonies”), Lissel first projects microscopic photographs of himself onto the bacteria, which begin to regenerate their own images due to their light sensitivity. Cultivated in petri dishes, they position themselves in the light-sensitive spots and shy away from the shadows. The light images which are formed are photographed, afterwards, the light sources are withdrawn and the bacteria formations disintegrate. In the work cycles, “Selbstzeugnisse”, “Vanitas”, “Der Weg zum Licht” (“The Path to the Light”), “Domus Aurea”, and “Myself”, the creation, transience, and existence of life are directly brought up for discussion several times. A disintegrating building relic from the past, a dead fish, a rotting apple, a withering leaf. Copied and reproduced from bacteria, which are the starting points for both the development and the impermanence of this world.

In the meantime, the newest work cycles in the imagemaking art of Edgar Lissel are called “Pluoreszenz” and “Sphaera Incognita”, respectively, and will record that which exists. (wh)

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.