WERNER REITERER
July 4 - 16, 2000
 
 

 
 
The Secession is continuing its project presenting statements of Austrian and international artists on the political situation in Austria (Open letter to the Austrian president by the board of the Secession) with a work by Werner Reiterer.
 
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. 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.
 
 

 
 
Born in Graz, Werner Reiterer studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. From 1992 to 1996 he created the concept of a façade project for the CCW (Cultur Centrum Wolkenstein) at Stainach/Ennstal. Since 1991 he has repeatedly carried out art-and-architecture or public art commissions. However, in his oeuvre the artist mainly focuses on drawings, objects and installations in which the beholder is frequently part of the work - the passive objects respond to the beholder in a surprising way, or the beholder has to act so as to quasi complete the work. Language is often integrated in the works or constitutes the work itself.
 
The project for the Secession façade also consists of these two elements - a visual and a linguistic part. A rocking board with a rostrum on one side and benches for the audience on the other is slightly tilted towards the audience side. It visualises the democratic process of changing majorities, unstable relations of forces which only raise the speaker behind the rostrum if a sufficient number of people sit down on the benches and listen. The second part of the work is the word "normal", separated from the rocking board by two orange-coloured dots, or rather, pointing to it. It refers to the political discourse which, according to Reiterer, is constantly "equipped in terms of language" - in the current case, it is the government's view of what is "normal". However, this also indicates that one might also tend to get accustomed to things, considering them more "normal" the longer they last, e.g. the polemic language which is presently characteristic of the public political discourse. Here, the normality of changed relations of forces in the framework of democratic structures interlocks with the seeming and proclaimed normality of a polemic discourse that is not actually all that normal, and with structures undergoing fundamental changes in their details. They refer to one another and seek to separate what is normal from what seems to be normal.
 
Further artists include: Monica Bonvicini, Louise Bourgeois, Renée Green, Paul McCarthy, Milica Tomic, Heimo Zobernig.
 
 
For updated information please contact Matthias Herrmann, Sylvie Liska and Eleonora Louis at the Vienna Secession on +43- 1- 587 53 07.