Kunsthaus Bregenz KUB 2016 Program 2016
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Kunsthaus Bregenz KUB 2016 Program 2016 30 | 01 | 2016 — 15 | 01 | 2017 English Mission Statement 2016 The program at Kunsthaus Bregenz is founded on issues linked to this particular place. Monographic statements are being planned that address both the building itself and the structures of the past and present. Art’s sensory means can lead to a reconsideration of unquestioned judgments, prescribed moral standards, and individual self-identity. In 2016 four artists will be engaging with currently pressing issues: the movement of refugees, the frictions between cultures and religions, the hegemony of digitally controlled capital, and the fault lines of suppressed history. If art is merely delivered, hung, and returned, it remains dis- connected. Rather it should emerge from the specifics of the locality, being inspired by existent structures, and relating to local circ- umstances. It is a matter of precision and individual statements, of being specifically adapted, of inspiration and grand gestures. Cover This is what KUB stands for. In 2016 exhibitions throughout the © Kunsthaus entire institution will be cast from one mold. The four monographic Bregenz exhibitions will be accompanied by a program entailing new concepts: Kunsthaus Bregenz, the KUB Billboards on Seestraße which will in future be dedicated to façade corridor a younger generation of artists, who have grown up in an increas- Foto: Hélène Binet © Kunsthaus ingly digitalized and globalized world, likewise KUB Projects will use Bregenz external spaces to make art also visible as a social practice. 02 03 KUB 2016 Program I am proud to be able to assume leadership of the future of Kunsthaus Bregenz and its employees. Kunsthaus Bregenz represents an extraordinary success story. Since opening in 1997 its worldwide profile has been well secured. Above all its interior spaces provoke a productive disruption to habitual sensibilities. It is as if eyes, ears, and pores have been opened up. It is not surprising that the archi- tect Peter Zumthor relates closely to music. He has also created the best possible conditions for the visual arts. The paintings by the US American Joan Mitchell, whose works were on display in the 2015 summer exhibition Joan Mitchell: Retrospective, could hardly have unfolded in any other space with such majesty. The manner in which the paint has been applied with such verve and painterly vitality becomes all the more vivid against the background of the refined concrete walls. Restlessness and tranquility, curiosity and humility confront each other. The audience enthusiastically absorbed the exhibition’s visual energy. We are currently preparing the last exhibition of the year. Heimo Zobernig, who was invited by Yilmaz Dziewior to represent Austria at this year’s Venice Biennale, will be recreating the installa- tion he constructed for the Austrian Pavilion in Venice in the spaces of the Kunsthaus. This will entail the partial removal of the famous glass ceiling. Outside the space and against the façade of the Vorarlberger Landestheater facing Karl-Tizian-Platz, Zobernig is having a large-scale black wall erected. This sober structure is a reference to his own laconic art as well as to the building itself — a monumental cast shadow comprising plywood coated in tar. As a harbinger, Zobernig’s invitation card and exhibition poster features an image of white display walling, a neutral matter-of-fact tabula rasa. Heimo Zobernig’s lapidary placeholders are examples of an art Heimo Zobernig which has the ability to disrupt practiced patterns of thought. How- Untitled, 2015 Coated particle ever, art can only encourage vanguard thinking and contemplation, board, steel frame if it eschews distractions, superficial charm, and blind confirmations on casters of the status quo. In succeeding it becomes capable of transforming 292 x 202 x 80 cm Foto: Archiv HZ both prevailing beliefs and the existing context. 04 05 KUB 2016 Program Exhibitions 2016 Peter Zumthor has written that his design for the KUB building was inspired by the weather conditions particular to its location on Lake Constance — its light, mist, and fog. A climatic atmosphere and a perception of light became architecture. The building is a response to and a visualization of the location. The Scottish artist, and winner of the Turner Prize, Susan Philipsz is addressing the musical heritage of German speaking emigrants, indirectly referencing Zumthor’s fog metaphor. Hanns Eisler wrote the music for the film Night and Fog by Alain Resnais from 1955. The film narrates deportations during the Holocaust. Audio tracks of this music will be heard in the Kunsthaus. The building becomes a physical resonance of loss, crime, and history. In addition KUB will be cooperating with the Jewish Museum of Hohenems. A work by Philipsz en plein air at the Jewish cemetery will confront the history of the region. The US American artist Theaster Gates is a shooting star in the world of contemporary art. Gates is well known as the initiator of the annual meeting of Afro-American artists in Chicago. He is con- sidering a variant of his Black Artists Retreat for Bregenz, possibly in relation to refugees now living in the vicinity. Theaster Gates’ visual work comprises large-scale sculpture, distinctive for its roughly finished carpentry, coated in bitumen or clad in roof shingles. Before working as an artist Gates was a Chicago Transit Authority employee. This experience of engaging with social and urban issues is one that also distinguishes his artistic practice. For the Dorchester Susan Philipsz Project Gates acquired vacant derelict buildings, which he refurbished and transformed into cultural institutions and for which he has since 30 | 01 — 03 | 04 | 2016 become renowned far beyond his hometown. Wael Shawky follows in summer during the period of the Bregenz Festival. The Egyptian artist, based in Alexandria, became instantly renowned after presenting his film Cabaret Crusades at the Istanbul Biennial 2011. A book by the Franco-Lebanese author Amin Theaster Gates Maalouf, narrating the medieval crusades from an Arabic perspective, served as his point of departure. The theatrical and elaborate costumes 23 | 04 — 26 | 06 | 2016 involved in this summer show immediately evoke associations with the Bregenz Festival. Some of the dialogue in these films is in Arabic. The differences between East and West, the common but simultane- ously disputed history of their holy sites, and links to Acre in Israel, one of Bregenz’ twin towns, all comprise extremely current references. Wael Shawky The forth solo exhibition during the fall of 2016 is dedicated to Lawrence Weiner, one of Conceptual Art’s most senior protago- 16 | 07 — 23 | 10 | 2016 nists. Weiner is a cult figure in the world of contemporary art. His subject matter is language and text which may take a spatial or sculptural form. The work addresses reading and decoding, inter- Kunsthaus Bregenz pretations and associations, and not least questions concerning the Photo: Matthias nature of the work of art itself. For KUB he is planning a compre- Weissengruber Lawrence Weiner © Kunsthaus hensive display of his work, which will also include an exterior one Bregenz on KUB’s striking glass façade. 12 | 11 | 2016 — 15 | 01 | 2017 06 07 KUB 2016 Program KUB 2016.01 Susan Philipsz 30 | 01 — 03 | 04 | 2016 Susan Philipsz is one of today’s leading artists. Her work revolves around explorations of the human voice and a melancholic existentialism. Her acoustic work is an interplay between spaces and sensibilities. The majority of her works draw on the specifics of particular places. She became well-known through a capella renditions of songs; her work Filter (1998) for example quoted such artists as Nirvana, Marianne Faithfull, Velvet Underground, and Radiohead. The work was replayed through loudspeakers located at a bus stop and in a supermarket. For the 1999 Manifesta in Ljubljana she sang the Internationale in a passageway. In 2000 she addressed James Joyce’s short story The Dead. For the Glasgow International Festival she developed Lowlands, after a ballad from the 16th century. The love song — initially sung in three versions, to be replayed in the dark spaces under Glasgow’s bridges — was Susan Philipsz later recreated at Tate Modern in London, where it won her the War Damaged prestigious Turner Prize (2010). Musical Instruments The subject matter of memory, grief, and trauma has been (Pair), 2015 Two-channel increasingly confronted recently, such as in the work for the rotunda audio installation in the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and at the site of the train Installation view Theseustempel, station in Kassel for dOCUMENTA (13). In a recent series of work Kunsthistorisches she has been employing instruments damaged by war. The voices Museum, Vienna Photo: Thomas have now become instrumental, their staging a sculptural but none- Ritter theless scarred presence. 08 09 KUB 2016 Program Susan Philipsz was born in 1965 in Glasgow. She completed a BA in Her many group exhibitions include the 14th Istanbul Biennial, Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee (1989-93) Istanbul (2015); Soundscapes, The National Gallery, London (2015); and an MA in Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast (1993-94). Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture, In 2000 she was awarded a residency in the P.S.1 studio program, and Kyoto (2015); Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg (2014); Soundings, A in 2001 she participated in the Kunst-Werke e.V. artists’ residency Contemporary Score, MoMA — The Museum of Modern Art, New York, program in Berlin, the city she has lived in since. In 2010 she won the (2013); dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012); Haunted, Solomon R. Guggen- Turner Prize, and in 2014 she was awarded an OBE. heim Museum, New York (2010); Turner Prize, Tate Britain, London Her recent solo exhibitions include War Damaged Musical Instru- (2010); the 29th Biennale de São Paulo, São Paulo (2010).