Alois Mosbacher, Out There, 2004


In his exhibition Out There, specially conceived for the Secession, Alois Mosbacher premieres a block of works developed over the last few years comprising over 80 pictures and revolving around the theme of the woods as a space for outsiders, adventurers and drop-outs. By interlocking the classical media of painting and drawing with the language and spaces of virtual computer games, he expands his image-based research into complex narratives that present contemporary meaning potentials of the woods on various different levels. Characteristic of Mosbacher's pictures is the fact that the figurations and motifs with which he deals are developed in dialogue with a discussion of painterly issues.



Alois Mosbacher, Kampfbild, 2003/04, Öl auf Leinwand


Besides literary sources and computer games, Alois Mosbacher's pictures have their starting point in his wide-ranging research on the Internet; on live acting role plays (LARP), for example, in which large groups of people meet in the woods in costume and armed with weapons in order to slip into foreign roles and stage fantasy games in accordance with precise rules.



Railway, 2004, Öl/Bleistift auf Leinwand, 130 x 130 cm


Alois Mosbacher sees the process of exploring the image material he finds as a sketch from which he derives additional levels of meaning through the process of painting and drawing, and which he uses to probe the possibilities of a new iconography of the landscape painting. Mosbacher contrasts the idea established since the Romantic period of the woods as a melancholic idyll with the very much older idea of the woods as a synonym for the unexplored, the dark and the frightening, which he brings dramatically up to date using unexpected props from contemporary civilisation - apparently forgotten travel bags, a covered car, an uninhabited hut. The woods appear as a utopian space for counterworld models, as a refuge for outsiders, and equally as a scene of and backdrop for crimes. This ambivalence and ambiguity of possibilities develops beyond moral implications in the individual pictures as well as in the narrative that emerges between them.



Volvo, 2003, Öl auf Leinwand, 160 x 200 cm


Mosbacher fans out his project into different groups of pictures which spread out on various different levels with no predefined direction, like in a video game. The architecture of unfolding partitions Mosbacher developed for the Out There exhibition highlights this open, non-linear quality of the narrative. With its tapering pathways, passages and squares his mise en scène creates a narrative in the space, leaving it up to the viewers to piece it together bit by bit or level by level.



Alois Mosbacher, Out There, 2004


Alois Mosbacher devotes equal attention to fundamental questions of painting as he does to the thematic and narrative conception of the pictures. The interplay of abstract and figurative means of expression is characteristic of his style of painting. In his works, the graphic precision of his gestural, dynamic brushstrokes is juxtaposed with free painting in which light and colour embody a high degree of autonomy, a style of painting that dissolves, and sometimes literally drips, over space and into colour structures.



Harvest, 2003, Öl auf Leinwand, 160 x 200 cm


PUBLICATION

ALOIS MOSBACHER 96 pages, 71 colored illustrations, 34 b/w illustrations authors: Hans Ulrich Obrist & Alois Mosbacher, Brigitte Huck, Matthias Herrmann Secession 2004, ISBN 3-901926-68-2 Distribution: Kerber Verlag ___________________ available in the shop

Investigators, 2002, Öl auf Leinwand, 200 x 300 cm


EXHIBITION DISCUSSION
Monday, May 10, 2004, 7 p.m.
Peter Pakesch, director of the Landesmuseum Joanneum Graz, talks with Alois Mosbacher
An event of Friends of the Secession.



Alois Mosbacher, Out There, 2004


ALOIS MOSBACHER, born in 1954, lives and works in Vienna. Exhibtions (selection): 2004 Hund, Galerie Altnöder, Salzburg; Neue Wilde - Eine Entwicklung, Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg; 2003 Außer Atem - Fokus Österreichischer Malerei, Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden; 2001 Fallobst, Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg; 2000 Milch vom ultrablauen Strom - Strategien österreichischer Künstler 1969-2000, Kunsthalle Krems; 1998 Das Jahrhundert der künstlerischen Freiheit, Secession, Vienna; Des Eisbergs Spitze, Kunsthalle, Vienna; 1997 Alpenblick - Die zeitgenössische Kunst und das Alpine, Kunsthalle Wien; ... die Blume, die Leiter ..., Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Galerie der Stadt Wels; The Austrian Vision - Positions in Contemporary Art, Denver Art Museum; 1996 Kunst aus Österreich 1896-1996, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn



Leo liegt, 2003, Öl auf Leinwand, 200 x 270 cm


Photos: Matthias Herrmann


For their kind support of the exhibition, we would like to thank: Arbeiterkammer Wien
The exhibition has been supported by:
Amt der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung, Kulturabteilung

CAROLA DERTNIG  BERNHARD FRUEHWIRTH

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2004

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