Johanna Kandl, Secession 1999. Photos: Matthias Herrmann, Helmut Kandl
 
 
 
Now that the tenth anniversary of the demise of the East and the Iron Curtain is being duly celebrated in ceremonial addresses and symposia, we tend to forget in the euphoria of the moment the fact that the borders between East and West have not become any more open than before. All that has changed is that they are now being zealously guarded by the West instead of the East so as to discourage illegal immigration. Thus, the East remains - in spite of all political change - a terra incognita, as western tourism only affects a few select places.
 
The artist Johanna Kandl is one of the rare commuters between these two worlds. Together with her husband and colleague Helmut Kandl, she has undertaken a number of artistic and curatorial projects, as well as research in Romania, Georgia, Russia and the Ukraine. The photographs she took on these trips later served as material for her paintings. Here the artist focuses her attention on incidental and seemingly irrelevant details, which nevertheless reflect and filter events of world magnitude.
 
The pictures hanging along the walls of the Main Hall feature above all street markets. By combining these scenes with quotations from daily and weekly newspapers Johanna Kandl evokes a tension which on the one hand makes the cheery slogans of the financial experts seem suspect and on the other hand reveals the links between the daily life of different economic regions and their social reality. These pictures are accompanied by portrait-like paintings that illustrate situations that were pleasingly unnerving for the artist. Because of their more intimate subject matter, these pieces can be viewed in freestanding cubicles that allow the viewer a feeling of near intimacy.
 
Johanna Kandl perceives in painting as an artistic craft a process of deceleration, of intensifying memory through delay. The transmogrification of the photographs to painting lends to a transformation of the subjects themselves: the snapshot-like pictorial images assume a surprising gravity, not least because the artist refuses to resort to photorealism. On the contrary, she speaks of hyperrealism in connection with the inserted lines of text in the pictures where the pictorial finds its necessary supplement in the form of script. In this way, Johanna Kandl succeeds in a gently resuscitating the half-forgotten technique of genre painting. She exploits this genre so as to approach social, political and economic themes from her own individual perspective. This sentimental approach both expands on and contrasts with media coverage and is the result of her personal appraisal of her experiences - this duality often emerges in Johanna Kandl's work and offers no patent solutions, but instead highlights problems and contrasts oversimplified slogans with complex realities.
 
The ensuing tension between public and private life is also reflected by the artist's designs for the exhibition architecture, where relatively isolated cubicles contrast with the large space and the high wall surfaces. The artist drastically altered the quasi-public area of the Main Hall of the Secession by dividing it up into equally sized halves accessible only from the foyer with the aid of a wall - which is a clear reference to the conceptual techniques of the artist, who refuses to allow her work to be seen as mere painting, but as a game of similarities both on a large scale and in those discriminating details so important to her.
 

PUBLICATION

JOHANNA KANDL 56 pages, 31 b/w illustrations, 70 illustrations authors: Hans-Christian Dany, Matthias Herrmann, Andreas Spiegl sold out ___________________

 

JOHANNA KANDL was born in Vienna in 1954 and initially gained recognition through her painting. A series of interventions, researches and cooperative projects (e.g. with the staff of a metal-working enterprise) have sprang from her interest in public spaces since the 1980's.
Selected exhibitions: Academy of the Fine Arts, Belgrade (1981); Galerie Knoll, Vienna (1987, 1988, 1991, 1994, 1998); "Arbeitszeit", Vienna State Opera (1994); "Der Kreis ist noch lange nicht geschlossen", Burgtor, Heldenplatz, Vienna (1995); "Geschlossene Gesellschaft", Salzburger Kunstverein (1996); Center of Contemporary Art, Vilnius (1997).
 
 
 

ANN-SOFI SIDÉN

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 1999

 


For further information and photographic material please contact:
 
Tamara Schwarzmayr
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
presse@secession.at