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”We never wanted to overthrow tradition, but rather build on it”. In retrospect, when Wilhelm Holzbauer emphasizes the idea of building on tradition as a central aspect of arbeitsgruppe 4, one becomes aware of the timeframe and circumstances of their development. The post-war period, characterized by financial hardship and the reconstruction of the country, could not really embrace the new trends of a developing modern age. These movements could probably only take root in this country when the desire for security and the good old days had sufficiently challenged the cultural scene. While the avant-garde had a relatively easy starting point, based on work that was not always oriented towards utility, the architecture scene had to persuade politicians, officials, and a conservative society through their own visions and negotiations. In Johannes Spalt, Wilhelm Holzbauer, Friedrich Kurrent, and Otto Leitner, Austria found four visionaries who were ready to meet this challenge, but build on tradition at the same time.

Studying under Clemens Holzmeister at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, they founded a working team at the beginning of their studies in 1952. Their “masters“ rarely attended work reviews, however, they observed the creative endeavors of their students in a well-meaning manner. The Salzburger “School of Seeing”, the summer academy under the direction of Oskar Kokoschka, contributed a great deal to the development of art and architecture. Here, the four students got acquainted with the architect Konrad Wachsmann, who emigrated to the US in 1941, and who had a substantial influence on the group with his innovative work methods. Within the environment of this group, there were poets, composers, and filmmakers such as the Wiener Gruppe, Peter Kubelka, the music ensemble, die reihe—who all partied together, as well as influenced each other.

Member Otto Leitner left the group after one year in order to participate in a competition to design the City Museum of Vienna in Karlsplatz, which he wanted to take on alone. His colleagues, Spalt, Kurrent, and Holzmeister, participated in the competition as well. The group did not win, however, the experience paved the way for the group for projects that followed. The unofficial name of the group, “the 3/4“, was coined by the designer Anna Lülja Praun, which reffers to Leitner’s separation from the group with a sense of humor. The new constellation held together until 1956. Holzbauer’s journey to the US, as well as opposing points of view of the individual members on the role of the architect in public life, led to a further reduction of the team.

The arbeitsgruppe 4 harbored a special interest in the building of churches, not so much due to any commitment to this tradition, but rather due to the church’s ability and willingness as a client to support their extravagant projects at this time. Although many of their projects won competitions, none of their housing projects were realized. Their ideas, especially in terms of “Wohnraumschule” (“living room” schools), were regarded either as trend-setting, or too innovative for their time. This reception was also applied to their concepts for urban planning. Only years later did the ideas of the group come into fruition—for example, with the revival of the Flaktürme, the flak towers in Vienna, and the redirection of the Argentinierstrasse around the Karlskirche.

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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. When music happens, time does not pass, it expands, accumulates, can not be measured. It is no longer in the clock and enters our blood…

The cure in this case is not overcoming the ailment but seizing it, transforming it into a score. The mystery of the silence that surrounds us –existence itself- lies at the root of the surprise and consolation of the notes which we produce as medicine. It is true that any instrument is fine - if this relationship with the magic of silence is given.

To serve this desire, Constantin Luser offers us an object with an imagined subject.

All components must have their place determined by their function and meaning. The object itself has primacy over its components while the space itself and the place and role allocated to man in it, is a constitutive element of the work and creates new realms of experience.

There is no form without its opposite – they constitute a unity of meaning where the negative is an imprint of the positive: Absence (life), presence (sound) and the will to the structuring and usage of space. And where does it all lead to ? To chaos (χάος) or to order (κόσμος) ? In other words, order of the world….

The essential key is his personal approach, the current in which he inscribes himself being an intermediator, in order to strike a chord in the collective alterity.

He creates a space, topos, which belongs to an utopía…where the abstract, the absence of sound, is a consequence of the presence of the corpus and a way of reading it. The impossibility of the real, its spirit would otherwise not be conceivable. It could not converge with individual life which is always an incarnation of its abstraction. Whenever we create an open form, it is filled with spirits. This is the faculty of the form: it cannot avoid conjuring up the unshaped.

Without the rupture which the violently new form provokes, we shall not be able to listen to the return of meaning to the cacophony of our existence. Is there anything stranger than our existence? Music is there because the sense of immediacy is literally untranslatable.

Instead of reconstruction, there is construction, there is installation which does not reproduce the visible but instead, makes the invisible visible. The impetus of his work has its starting point in this constructivist core which not only emancipates creation from representation but orientates it towards the creation of space and time through sound, gesture and dramaturgy.

He demarcates the final sense of the forms and directs it towards a vertebration of an animist reality. As a product of its power of shaping the world, the structures do not exist just by themselves but possess the idiosyncrasy of roaming between the merely obvious and the unreal.

In this leap to meet the image, the poetic moment transgresses the merely existing in order to visualize the possible, the virtual: limit and metamorphosis, because finally it is about a shift where from the physical, material limitation of life a metamorphic process comes into being. In a transmutation of the sensible which interrupts the oscillation, the continuous stream of our inner voice… (ca)

As a commander he was a daredevil, willing to sacrifice human lives by the thousands and considered a military genius by his contemporaries, but at the same time a generous patron willing to spend his enormous wealth on his collections, as if his military strategy had a counterpart in his thinking.

Two of the exhibition’s sub-headings, “general” and “art-lover” being self-evident, “philosopher” remains to be proven. Certainly the prince kept correspondence with great intellectuals of his time and his passion for the sciences were a foreboding of the age of enlightenment.

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His interest lay mainly with the profane sciences. Eugene’s collector passion was different from his baroque contemporaries. He did not collect for the sake of representation or to collect rarities but out of a quest for knowledge and genuine passion for the sciences.

The philosopher Leibniz, who had entertained the idea of opening an academy of sciences in Vienna, a project which the prince was supportive of, but which eventually was abandoned, had personally dedicated a manuscript of his work outlining his philosophy of monadology, “Principes de la nature et de la grace fondés en raison” which the prince is known to have held in great esteem.

The prince had managed to put together a collection of 15000 printed works, 237 precious manuscripts, 290 volumes with etchings, and 250 cassettes with portraits in the years between 1712 and 1736. Of particular interest were books on natural history and geography. While his library “Bibliotheca Eugeniana”, prints and drawings were purchased by the Emperor Karl VI in 1737, from his heiress Princess Victoria of Savoy-Carignan -who had never met him and at once decided to sell everything- most of the artwork was bought by Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia.

On of the most spectacular features being the 15 original paintings on loan for this exhibition and back to Vienna for the first time since the prince’s death, there will also be busts, suits of armour, sabers and other arms, tents, drapery and more items illustrating his era.

An interesting aspect is the cultural exchange with the Habsburgs enemies of the times, the Ottomans, as seen in little items of the show and elaborated in the catalogue, like fashion fads “alla turcha” in Europe or baroque-inspired architecture in the Ottoman Empire.

The exhibition remains strictly in this age though, and there is no reference to contemporary views on politics, arts and history of reception of the era.

This podcast was realised with the kind support of UNIQUA ArtCercles. The exhibiton can be seen till the 6th of June 2010 at the Orangerie and Lower Belvedere.

A meal that is visually prepared not only informs us of the quality of the food. This view is also far more accessible on a symbolic level than it would be, for example, through our noses or palates. Our view readily contributes something, it directs our attention to something, it attributes a quality to the food that it previously did not possess. When the food is prepared in a way that makes it visually enticing, then it is also likely that something additional to the food is being served, or brought in front of our eyes to see. Lamb, rabbit, wine, salt, bread: these subjects are obviously not only about meals and consumption. The accessibility of the view to symbolic and narrative aspects of, and not only just to, the object, is also reflected in artistic representations of food, especially in the form of still lifes.

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A pheasant on a small wood inlay table next to a lobster, surrounded by silver bowls full of fresh citrus fruits: potentially edible items are shown here, but it’s probably more about the representation of wealth. For a long time, the representation of edible items was embedded into a religious context and its iconography. As a result, the apple was not only thought of as being a russet, Grafensteiner, or Granny Smith, it also served as a reminder of temptation and its consequences for humanity.

Beautifully presented food arouses the desire to just reach out and grab it: these foods represent wealth, indulgence, and exclusivity—qualities which can also be found in the baroque vanitas still life. But that which looks fresh and fruity at first glance appears old, shriveled, and close to death and decay upon the second view. In the vanitas still life, those who indulge in this feast for the eyes are served their existential just desserts in the end. The ripe fruits are already at the peak of their beauty, but from this point on, they can only go downhill. Distrust of desire, which is fleeting and enticing, comes into the picture – a meal that is served as a reminder of perishability and death.

The representation of food in art does not always have a narrative. The concentration of the still life artists on that which formerly only served as decoration provided them the freedom in other representations to work on an emerging visual language, independent of symbolic statements and narratives. Onions on a sideboard, or a bunch of asparagus - the less meaning the object possessed, the less the artist and art had to serve as ambassadors for matters which had nothing to with painting.

In the presentation of food, the refusal of the artist to be mistreated as ambassadors of something which lies beyond art has been noted. However, the represented meal is more often an indication of the themes of the respective time: its religious messages, its morals, its inequalities. The meal that is presented artistically for the eye is a warning against imprudent assimilation, against thoughtless imbibing. Instead, it demands thoughtfulness and clearly expresses, or hides a criticism of, gender relations, the pursuit of wealth, a bias towards beauty.

Visual treats to be devoured with the eyes: such is the theme of the exhibition called “Augenschmaus: A Feast for the Eyes – Food in Still Life” at Bank Austria Kunstforum. On display are principal works from the representation of food from the sixteenth century to the present, works ranging from Arcimboldo, Aertsen, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, Braque, to Hirst, Lassnig, and others, gathered from over sixty lenders. The exhibition will run from February 10th to May 30th. In this episode, the expert commentary on Augenschmaus is provided by Heike Eipeldauer, the curator of the exhibition, as well as Christian Petz, one of the best and most awarded chefs in Austria.

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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.

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Franz Kapfer is an artist from Austria. His interest lies in patterns of representation.
In his work “Trophies” in exhibition tanzimat (Augarten Contemporary 21.1.2010 - 16.5.2010) he examines cliché representations of Turkish motives in Austrian architecture.

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)

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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.

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)

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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)

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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)

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BAWAG PSK’s bold move paid off in more ways than one, their collaboration with Porgy & Bess—the largest external undertaking in the bank’s history—landed them the 2009 Maecenas Prize for Best Overall Concept/Large-Scale Enterprise in Art Sponsoring. Through their collaboration, they have not only modernized their image, they have improved and solidified their overall reputation among both their customers, employees, and the economic and cultural world at large.

BAWAG PSK takes a three-pronged approach to their sponsoring concept, covering culture, education, and charities, and all three fields have been combined within the Porgy & Bess enterprise. Through a collaboration between Porgy & Bess and the new Galerie “BAWAG Contemporary”, the artist Stephen Mathewson installed a commissioned work in the art space located in the foyer of the club. Jazz legend Carla Bley put on a benefit concert for the charitable organization, Wiener Tafel.

BAWAG PSK not only receives prizes, they grant them as well. In the field of education, a winner was announced for the Fidelio Competition at Porgy & Bess, in which one young musician is recognized among three hundred from the Konservatorium Wien University and then given the privilege of performing later at the music salon at the BAWAG PSK.

Taking chances, making informed choices, forging new paths—the concept for BAWAG PSK’s culture sponsoring strategy seems to keep one particular goal in mind, perhaps learned after many ups and downs: Keep your eyes on the prize and your investments will pay off in the end. (jn)

Since the 5th of December, the artist is held in Iran where she has been attending a commemoration ceremony for her parents. The artist’s departure was denied by the regime and the Ministry of Information is taking actions against her.

We want to express our solidarity with Parastou Forouhar and we hope for her prompt release. (wh/ek/es)

Suddenly, what is normally difficult and heavy becomes easy and light: e.g., one carries a piano into the courtyard.

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In order to catch the last rays of autumn and let your hearts run free, CastYourArt helped with the piano. Uwe Dreysel sings, the courtyard serves as the stage for the actor this time around—take your concert away. . .(wh)

Miniatures made of ivory, rhino and narwhale horn. Ostrich eggs, symbols of power and resistance as the ancient mythology says the giant birds live on stones and iron. Seychelles nuts washed ashore on the Maldives. Bezoars, rocks found in the stomach of ruminant animals that are rumoured to dispel melancholy, composed in the finest art of metalworking. Arty watches, wondrous automatic machines, quadrants, astrolabes and other scientific instruments. The most bizarre monstrosities, Madonna figures and Dionysian satyrs standing in a row with mystic animals thrown out of the deepest oceans. Basins, goblets, bowls, cans, mugs, made of gold, polished with precious and semi-precious stones. An unbelievable mishmash, collected at numerous expeditions and trips to the most isolated and distant places on earth, passed on, inherited, bought and finally exhibited at the Ambrase court of prince Ferdinand II and at the specially for this occasion equipped premises of Kaiser Rudolf II, at the Hradschin in castle of Prague. The cabinet of curiosities and wonders of the renaissance rulers opens up a whole new world to the curious.

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The displayed objects fascinate the viewer, cause amazement and inquisitiveness, and leave the impression of a long gone era. „In uno omnia.“ The view of the world of Athansius Kircher, scholar and founder of the first museum the Kircherianum at the Collegium Romanum, signalizes modern times not only by the immense amount of knowledge but also by power. The amazement should not only cause cognition and knowledge it should rather cause awe of the power of those who were able to pool it. The world as a micro cosmos within the chamber of curiosities represents the prince as the ruler of the world, explains Sabine Haag, an expert of the chamber of curiosities and managing director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.

The chamber of curiosities in the renaissance, an early model of museums conflicts with the emerging modern time assertiveness because the basis of the presented knowledge was to stabilise power. The general orientation of the chamber of curiosities, a concentration of knowledge and amazement was seen as a handing down of traditional perceptions. Too much wonder and amazement can be negative, as it inhibits and perverts the use of mind, says René Descartes. The holistic perception had to give way to the analysis and the concept of differentiation. A major part, of the chamber of curiosities collection disappears; the rest is split and distributed to emerging special museums.

The two chambers of curiosities and wonders of prince Ferdinand II and Rudolf II, are brought together by the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. In spring 2002 the collection was closed to the public and should reopen after a major restoration in spring 2012. The adjustment of the premises allows donators to become involved with the chamber of curiosities. For example, our partner UNIQUA sponsors the restoration of the Saliera saloon, named after the famous saltshaker of the Italian sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. CastYourArt, thanks to our partner UNIQUA, had the chance to take a look behind the closed doors of the chamber of curiosities and to hold an interview with Sabine Haag. (wh/ek)

This podcast was realised with the kind support of UNIQUA ArtCercles. The exhibiton “Karl der Kühne” can be seen till the 10th of January 2010 at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.

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)

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).

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.

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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.