Part of larger chart from the Amazing! Clever! Linguistic! exhibition I saw in Vienna.
Still mulling over the didactic exhibition devices and the condensed history of Conceptualism presented in this show, especially as regards the subject of my Fulbright project: the existential East.
The artists, co-curator, and myself at the exhibition opening
Back from Berlin, and feeling like I have finally caught up on my sleep after a long week installing, opening, and taking down BORDERS, the group exhibition I curated with Trevor Amery. It was such an interesting process curating this virtually. Between this blog and my current work, much of my life is online, so to speak, but organizing an art exhibition in Berlin from my computer in Budapest took it to the next level. Also, my co-curator, who lives in a different city in Hungary, and I would Skype and email to make up for the few in-person meetings. Yet somehow it all came together–and it’s hard to imagine how it could have gone smoother.
BORDERS was a group show featuring the work of nine artists working throughout Europe, from Greenland to Turkey. Hanging all the works–with the inevitable changes and challenges once you saw them in the space–was such a fun process. Seeing the gallery space for the first time, meeting the artists, installing their works all had the joy of discovery, as well as the feeling of finally meeting old friends. And seeing old and new friends from the US, Berlin, and many, many other places at the opening was such a rewarding experience. Truly it would not have been possible had it not been such a collaborative effort from all involved. The great guys at Staycation Museum were such a help throughout.
I only wish I had had the chance to see more of Berlin itself! More photos here and here.
The exhibition “Cinematic Scope” at Georg Kargl brings together the work of 6 artists who take a broad view of film, its aesthetics and presentation, in their artistic practice. In the work on view, projectors themselves become part of the medium or hanging flat screens adopt sculptural status. Above and below are installation shots of Wolfgang Ploger’s Texas Loud Texas Proud, where 16 mm film features text of the last words of executed Texas prisoners, illegible as it is projected on the wall but readable on the silkscreened film.
It highlights the mediation of information and the technology used with subject matter that is distinctly different. Rather than as medium, the projectors become important as sculptural objects with the film strips exaggerating this effect by stretching from floor to ceiling.
Tobias Putih’s Pre-projection takes film to its most distinctly sculptural iteration in the show, as it uses an enormous black pyramid to funnel an image onto the curve of a spoon on the gallery floor.
Manuel Knapp uses computer animation to create geometric planes of space which move and overlap to create spaces that seem almost three-dimensional. In this video projected onto the wall of a dark room, “film” as such seems irrelevant. The graphics form a moving sculptural element.
Construction/Dismantling by Andreas Fogarasi centers around a never-realized architectural project, the three films surveying a desolate construction site, a temporary carnival, and the sweeping of a street. The most contemporary and quiet presentation, doing away with calls of attention to the means of presentation, never the less floats the three staggered screens and their content, demanding a consideration of them as objects.