MUNTEAN/ROSENBLUM

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2000

"Where else"
Gallery, Graphic Cabinet
January 27 – March 19, 2000
 
   
 
      
Muntean/Rosenblum, Secession 2000
 
Markus Muntean and Adi Rosenblum, who live in Vienna, have been collaborating since 1992 in the art business. Their work concerns itself with traditional genre limits both from a media and methodical point of view, inasmuch as these are in the process of shifting, overlapping and dissolving. Painting forms one of the focal points of their artistic production, but one that eschews traditional classification and does not conform to academic criteria or, indeed, those of an avant-garde notion of anti-painting..
 
Adi Rosenblum and Markus Muntean react in their installation "Where else" to the nimbus of the two exhibition spaces in the Secession. The Graphic Cabinet on the first floor and the Gallery space in the basement are contrasted with one another: although the aesthetics of the former are more of the classic museum type, the space of the latter glitters in its all-round functionality, with the exhibition as such being just one of a number of possible uses. Another would be the installation of fast-food restaurant - and that is exactly what Muntean/Rosenblum do: they furnished this space with all the essential prerequisites of the lounge of a fast-food restaurant: in other words, with benches, tables, plastic greenery and fluorescent lighting that exude both cheapness and anonymity, just as much as they appear both inviting and repelling. This lack of individuality and arbitrariness that characterizes uniform spaces the world over is reflected by "Where else" in manifold ways.
 
 
 
      
Muntean/Rosenblum, Secession 2000 
 
The furnishings in the exhibition space maintain a precarious balance between art and artifice: the tables, and chairs were fashioned from thin plywood expressly for this occasion and are made to resemble models more than actual furniture. Practically unusable, they become part of a stage set: reproductions of paintings and photos by artists hang in cheap frames that match to the decoration. Some of their originals hang in the Graphic Cabinet.
The paintings link these separate parts of the exhibition by bringing both parts together with the aid of images. They are formed in the classic materials and techniques of panel painting and feature motifs that reflect the iconography of commercial photography produced by the lifestyle industry and are imbued with elements from comics, in other words a form of graphic art that now enjoys a certain amount of attention in art discourse, but that is seldom regarded as a recognized art form. The protagonists of Muntean's and Rosenblum's pictures, who are never denounced as losers or yuppies, illustrate details from anonymous times in anonymous spaces, and reflect an atmosphere that characterizes the 'nineties as a new fin de sìécle.
   

PUBLICATION

MUNTEAN/ROSENBLUM 72 pages, colored illustrations authors: Matthias Herrmann, Dominic Molon, Beatrix Ruf ___________________ available in the shop

 
 
Exhibitions (selection): Galerie Kidmat Eden, Tel Aviv (1996); City Racing Gallery, London (1997); Galleria Franco Noero, Turin (1999); Chigago Project Room (1999); Galerie Kargl, Vienna (1999); Kunsthaus Glarus (2000); Jack Tilton Gallery, New York (2000).
 
 

DIANA THATER

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2000

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