Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch, Atlas, installation view, Secession 2010, Photos: Wolfgang Thaler
When does a concrete act, endlessly repeated, acquire an inconceivable dimension, one that escapes our grasp and ultimately becomes abstract? How often must the same route be traveled before the traveler is inscribed into it and, conversely, the route inscribes itself into the traveler, so that place, route, and body become one? What part does the scale of a space play in the possibility of disappearing in that space?
These and similar questions manifest themselves in Atlas, Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch’s intervention at the Secession in which they define and expand the concept of the sculptural as a form of measure in space and/or time.
The main gallery at the Secession, designed in 1897 as a prototypical exhibition space, is empty except for a single conceptual unit. The room providing the framework for the exhibition itself becomes part of the intervention. In it, Six & Petritsch present two possible complementary forms of representing the world using their own means.
Klumpen (Chunk) is a concrete cast of a hollow in the wall of the Secession. Nicole Six spent 24 hours in this space, and the sculpture thus also represents the minimal dimensions of her body. Stapel (Stack), on the other hand, represents a maximum imaginable scale: a single picture, reproduced on 20,000 posters to be taken away free of charge, represents nothing less than the world itself.
The background for this picture is a project for which Six & Petritsch set off in October 2009 to an abandoned race course on the Greenwich meridian, that resembles a Möbius strip, where they aimed to cover the circumference of the Earth and cross the international dateline on their mopeds. Finally, the 500-page Index brings together the cartographic records that served Six & Petritsch as an aid to orientation while looping endlessly: on the one hand tallies spread out over countless pages, with each stroke marking a completed round; on the other hand, photographs taken on a rotating basis at twelve points along the course, exposed for twenty-four hours each, define location and view with the corresponding geographical coordinates and document the time. In this way, Six & Petritsch give their immaterial sculptural-performative work of “traveling round the world” a concrete form.
Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch, Atlas, 24 hours exposure, 2010 (nr.20,38,52,67,80)
Artist talk
Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch with Franz Xaver Baier
Thursday, April 8, 2010, 6.30 p.m.
on occasion of the presentation of the artist book NICOLE SIX & PAUL PETRITSCH, ATLAS
in their exhibition in the main hall at the Secession
An Event by the Friends of the Secession
Franz Xaver Baier, born in 1953, is author and Professor for Architecture at Hochschule München.
He is author of the book "Der Raum: zu einer Architektur des gelebten Raumes", numerous publications and actions dealing with a new conception of living space.
Artist Book
 |
NICOLE SIX & PAUL PETRITSCH, ATLAS 720 pages, dimension: 11,4 x 16,5 cm, b&w with 8 colour inserts texts by Paul Auster and Franz Xaver Baier German/English ISBN 9978-3-902592-28-6 ___________________ available in the shop |
Nicole Six (born 1971 in Vöcklabruck, Austria) and Paul Petritsch (born 1968 in Friesach, Austria) live and work in Vienna. One of their central concerns is the subject’s relation to the world as an existential experience. In often empty, seemingly infinite spaces, they use radical acts to put established norms and conventional notions of being-in-the-world to the test. Their video works, photographs, and works on paper, as well as their temporary performative interventions, possess an element of loneliness, as well as speaking of monotony and dissolution.
Catalogue
The exhibition will be accompanied by an artist’s book (German/English).
Selected exhibitions and projects
2009 Reading the City, ev+a 2009, Limerick; Spotlight, Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; Das menschliche und das tierische Wesen, Ursulinenkirche, Linz; 2008 Undiszipliniert, Das Phänomen Raum in Kunst, Architektur und Design, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; K08, Emanzipation und Konfrontation, Künstlerhaus Klagenfurt; unterwegs sein, Kunstraum Düsseldorf; 2007 Max Ernst und die Welt im Buch, Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; Temporally, The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon; I’m too tired to tell you, Agentur, Amsterdam; Kunstverein Baden, Kunstverein Baden; Peter Zumthor, Bauten und Projekte 1986–2007 mit einer Filminstallation von Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch, Kunsthaus Bregenz; Film ab, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst", BIG, Vienna; Kontakt Belgrad...aus der Sammlung der Erste Bank-Gruppe, Museum Moderner Kunst, Belgrade; 2006 Nicole Six / Paul Petritsch, Gesellschaft für aktuelle Kunst, Bremen; First the artist defines meaning, Camera Austria, Graz; Longitude / Latitude, haaaauch, Klagenfurt; Société des nations, Circuit, Lausanne; 2005 Tu Felix Austria...Wild at Heart, Kunsthaus Bregenz; Wisdom of Nature, Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya; Das Neue 2, Atelier im Augarten, Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst der Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere, Vienna; Das Spannende ist doch die Organisation von Materie, Area 53, Vienna; 2004 Open Studio, ISCP, New York; Transgressing-Systems, Innsbruck; Permanent Produktiv, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; White Spirit in Public Spaces, F.R.A.C. de Lorrain, Metz; 2003 Trauer, Atelier im Augarten, Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst der Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere, Vienna; America, bgf_plattform, Berlin; 2002 CAT Open artists’ choice, CAT Contemporary Art Tower – MAK Gegenwartskunstdepot, Vienna.
The exhibition Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch is sponsored by Arbeiterkammer Wien.
The Secession is supported by:
Erste Bank – Partner of the Secession
Wien Kultur
Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur
Friends of the Secession
Cooperation-, Mediapartners, Non-Cash Benefit
Der Standard
Ö1 Club
Silver Server
hs art service austria GmbH.
Trumer Privatbrauerei
viennapaint
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