DORIT MARGREITER
March 27 - April 9, 2000
 


 
 
With works by Franz West andJohn Baldessari the Secession started a project, that gathers artistic statements by Austrian as well as international artists commenting the political situation in Austria. (Open letter by the board of the artists' association)
 
The Secession, a private and independent artists' association, is one of Austria's leading institutions for contemporary art. The building is a famous landmark. Taking into account that its facade is one of the most photographed sites in Vienna, we are using it as a platform for critical artistic thought and expression. The right-hand wing of the façade has again and again been used in the history of the Secession for advertising purposes in that exhibition posters of the Secession were displayed on it. Now this wing is provided for various artistic thoughts.
 
The first two works in this series (Franz West and John Baldessari) tied in with the site, the Secession and its motto, in very specific terms while also referring to international pictograms. By contrast, Dorit Margreiter puts an explicit demand addressed to the government on her façade banner: "Resignation of the federal government as a prerequisite for anti-racist policies".
 
A photograph forms the background behind these black letters, an additional statement ("Against racism, nationalism and sexism") and a kind of logo, a star-shaped red spot stating the name of the group Get to Attack. The photograph is the close-up of a poster by 'gettoattack' taken from an extremely skewed angle. Gettoattack do not consider themselves as an association or permanent group, they see themselves as a platform for individuals who want to form networks and voice their opinions on the political situation in changing coalitions and varying actions. The address of the gettoattack website in the photograph is incomplete and blurred. Very much in the foreground, on the lower margin of the banner, there is a resistor, an electrical component, which in reality is small but appears disproportionately large in the close-up. In playing with different structures and relations, in the shift of relations such as near and far, big and small, well-defined and blurred, object reality and logo cipher, an individual's attitude is visualized in clear aesthetic form and content.
 
Each project will be on view on the right-hand wing of the front façade for two weeks, and will be documented and included in a final publication. This project is entirely funded by private individuals, and should run for half a year.
 
Further artists et.al.: Monica Bonvicini, Louise Bourgeois, Günter Brus, Markus Geiger, Jochen Gerz, Renée Green, Joseph Kosuth, Paul McCarthy, Werner Reiterer, Heimo Zobernig.
 
 
Project team: Matthias Herrmann, Sylvie Liska, Eleonora Louis