BODY DISPLAY Performative Installation #4

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2004

Body & Economy
Feb. 19 – Apr. 18, 2004
Main Gallery



Body Display, Installation View, Secession 2004


Victor Alimpiev & Marian Zhunin, John Bock, Cosima von Bonin, Brice Dellsperger, Andrea Fraser, Swetlana Heger, Anette Baldauf & Dorit Margreiter &, René Pollesch, John Miller

Curated by Eva Maria Stadler (guest curator of the Secession), Angelika Nollert (Siemens Arts Program)
In cooperation with Siemens Arts Program



Body Display, Installation View, Secession 2004


The "Body Display" exhibition is the fourth station in a five-part series of exhibitions entitled "Performative Installation." This series is an initiative of Siemens Arts Program in cooperation with Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Museum of Contemporary Art Siegen, Secession, Vienna and the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig. All of the stations deal with a common theme, but each examines it from a particular point of view: construction & situation, narrative, communication, body & economy, and architecture.



Body Display, Installation View, Photo: Wolfgang Günzel


The theme of "Body Display" is the human body in the economic context. The concept of "display" alludes to the spatial mode of presentation, i.e. the stage-like frame within the confines of which the body acts and is exposed to view. At the same time, the notion of "display" also refers to the body per se, which functions as a display for various roles and identities. To correspond with the exhibition's thematic orientation, the main space of the Secession will be hung with a temporary lower ceiling which will serve as the plane of an imaginary stage. This intervention simultaneously transforms the room into a black box, i.e. a space for live actions and projected images.



Victor Alimpiev & Marian Zhunin, Ode, 2003


In a video entitled "Ode" (2003), Victor Alimpiev (*1973, lives in Moscow) and Marian Zhunin (*1968, lives in Moscow) stage a choreography for apparently synchronized uniformed bodies. Without any recognizable narrative context, these persons move in a collective which seems to simultaneously imprison and protect them, thereby calling into question the relationship between the masses and the individual.



John Bock, Weißschweißproduktion, 2004, Photo: Wolfgang Günzel


Cascades of words, neologisms, and their reification in the form of objects serve as the guiding threads in performative installations by John Bock (*1965, lives in Berlin). These installations usually orbit around the themes of organic and/or economic processes. His "Weißschweißproduktion" (2003) is an installation that consists of blocks of Styrofoam, a wall made of textile, a raised bier, and video projections. The entire installation deals with the body and its vulnerability to injury.


'
John Bock, Weißschweißproduktion, 2003, Courtesy Galerie Klosterfelde, Berlin; Gallery Anton Kern, New York


Artworks by Cosima von Bonin (*1962, lives in Hamburg) combine installations, objects, paintings, films, music, and performance art. She uses materials taken from ordinary, everyday reality to create surreal spaces that can evoke memories and dreamlike images. Her rejection of the notion of a so-called "natural" bodily feeling takes the form of an oversize, almost archaic-looking and cobbled-together bed.



Brice Dellsperger, Body Double 9, 1997, Courtesy Galerie Air de Paris, Paris


In films entitled "Body Double," Brice Dellsperger (*1972, lives in Paris) re-stages scenes from familiar horror movies and melodramas such as "Psycho" or "Vertigo." The figures of the actors, which cannot be assigned to any defined roles, alternate between male and female role playing. Dellsperger stages a contemporary pietà in "Body Double #9" (1997), which is projected so that it appears to be a sort of triptych.



Andrea Fraser, Exhibition, 2002, Courtesy Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York


Andrea Fraser (*1965, lives in New York) has been well known since the mid 1980s for her research, which is critical of institutions. In Fraser's double-wall video installation "Exhibition" (2002), the artist herself performs as a dancer, clad in a Brazilian carnival costume, who inscribes herself into a samba formation in Rio de Janeiro. By so doing, Fraser overlays the contexts of acting on the one hand and artistic practice on the other.



Swetlana Heger, Signed by..., 2004, Courtesy Galerie Air de Paris, Paris


For her cooperations with well-known enterprises in the worlds of design and fashion, Svetlana Heger (*1968, lives in Berlin) makes her own body available to these enterprises as a surface for advertising. An exchange of merchandise takes place in return for this service. She presents "Signed by…" in the current exhibition. This artwork is a large advertising panel which displays the artist's signature, painted across the panel in large format by a sign-painting company, as though her signature itself were a logo. Furthermore, an additional logo from a sponsor makes her signature into an advertising medium.



Anette Baldauf & Dorit Margreiter, The She Zone, 2004, Courtesy Galerie Krobath Wimmer, Wien


Anette Baldauf (*1965, lives in Vienna and New York) und Dorit Margreiter (*1967, lives in Vienna and Los Angeles) present "The She Zone," an artwork about a shopping mall in Abu Dhabi which is off limits to men and accessible only to women. This women-only shopping center is intended to offer its female clientele the opportunity to move about freely, without restrictions imposed by religious and societal compulsions.



John Miller, The Lugubrious Game, Secession 2004


The focal point of artworks by John Miller (*1954, lives in New York and Berlin) is occupied by various models through which society attempts to identify and represent itself. His assemblages of materials define the artwork as a libidinous, consumerist fetish. The installation entitled "The Lugubrious Game" (1999) presents a staging of a TV show and describes the medial sellout through the absence of the TV show's guests.

In his TV production "24 Hours Don't Make One Day" (2003), the author and theater director René Pollesch (*1962, lives in Berlin) describes living and working situations in the Age of Globalization. The mental and psychological states of the protagonists suffer due to the ubiquitous presence of an electronic space which abolishes the boundaries between working hours and leisure time. Divest of context and relationship, these individuals wander aimlessly amidst their "freedoms."


EXHIBITION DISCUSSION
In conjuction with the exhibition BODY DISPLAY Performative Installation #4
Thursday, 4 March 2004, 6.30 p.m., with Sabeth Buchmann (lecturer of art history at the Acadamy of Fine Arts, Vienna), and the curators Eva Maria Stadler and Angelika Nollert (Siemens Arts Program)
An event of Friends of the Secession.


PUBLICATION
The series of exhibitions is accompanied by a catalogue entitled "Performative Installation." Edited by Angelika Nollert, the catalogue contains texts written by all of the exhibition's curators. The catalogue is published by Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Cologne. ISBN 3-936859-05-1.

PERFORMATIVE INSTALLATION 256 pages, 173 colored illustrations, 9 b/w illustrations authors: Michael Roßnagl, Angelika Nollert, Silvia Eiblmayr, Kaspar König, Christine Litz, Barbara Engelbach, Eva Maria Stadler, Barbara Steiner Siemens Arts Program, Angelika Nollert 2003, ISBN 3-936859-05-1 Distribution: Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft mbH ___________________ available in the shop

Insitus: Matthias Herrmann

The exhibition has been supported by Zumtobel Staff Österreich, HS Art Service

HENRIK OLESEN

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2004

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