Press release

MARK LECKEY + ALESSANDRO RAHO WE TRANSFER

September 11 – November 1, 2015

Press conference: Wednesday, September 9, 2015, 11 a.m. Opening: Thursday, September 10, 2015, 7 p.m.

We Transfer, ’s first solo show in Austria, focuses on the notion of transformation, conver- sion, transcendence. The simultaneity of different modes of existence (virtual vs. real), or of conscious- ness, that is significant for the present networked digital era is an issue inherent in a number of works by this British artist, whom recently labelled ‘the artist of the YouTube generation.’ Leckey counters the view that smart technologies and an ever denser network of algorithms increasingly ratio- nalises us users and transforms us into inhuman cyborgs with an alternative account: the network and its coordinates, he proposes, in fact engender a chaotic irrationalism, an unconscious. Everyone has his or her own individual—and, as the artist puts it, “autistic”—grid in which images, information, and recol- lections are stored.

Selected images from Mark Leckey’s personal grid are on display in the Secession’s main gallery. Short animations flicker across ten LED screens in endless loops—fluid visual ‘teasers’ such as a scene from Disney’s Pinocchio, a drag queen, the full moon, an ecstatically dancing teenager, a map visualizing Great Britain’s nocturnal illumination, a blown-up RGB grid, a figure that seems to mutate into an amor- phous body… One recurrent motif is the dot, surfacing variously as the red, green, and blue points of light in the LED display’s matrix, marks on the light pollution map, the circular disk of the moon, the raster dots of a print, or a fabric pattern.

The exhibition’s key figure is a middle-aged man in a polka-dot dress and hat, kneeling on the pavement in supplication—a gesture that recalls icons of saints or martyrs. For Leckey, this scene from Billy Wilder’s screwball comedy 1, 2, 3 (1961) perfectly embodies the ecstatic moment of transition. In the exhibition, the image of Polka Dot Man isolated from the movie develops a life of its own. Variations on the motif appear in formats including large prints, a psychedelic GIF animation on one of the LED screens, a moving still in a new video, and a series of oils on canvas by Alessandro Raho. At Leckey’s invitation to show his work at the Secession, Raho created an arrangement in the Grafisches Kabinett that integrates this figure and five other pictures in a sort of family portrait. A rather striking feature of the paintings is the attention the artist has devoted to the clothes of his “sitters”: T-shirts printed with cartoon characters as well as an extravagantly patterned pantsuit effectively function as pictures within the picture.

In a screening room set up in the main gallery’s right wing, Louise Bourgeois’ Nature Study (1984) is subjected to a disturbing experiment. Degradations (2015) uses 3D animation to set the flesh-coloured figure in motion and highlight the strange inertia of its rubbery physicality. Twice a day, a selection of videos including Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999), March of the Big White Barbarians (2005), and Three Minute Wonders— (2008) is screened here, too.

Mark Leckey’s highly idiosyncratic work combines installations, objects, videos, and sound sculptures with popular culture, in particular British subculture. In his iconic video Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999), he compiled found footage from 1970s Northern Soul to Rave in the late 1990s, thus creating a visual essay on over twenty years of dance culture in England. In exhibition projects such as The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things (Hayward Touring, UK, 2013) or Lending Enchantment to Vulgar Materials (WIELS, Brussels, 2014), he explores the cultural identity that shapes our society characterised by commerce and consumer goods fetishism and, more recently, digital technologies and the impact they have on the relationships between people, objects, and environments.

Invited by the board of the Secession Curator: Jeanette Pacher

Mark Leckey Mark Leckey, born in 1964 in (UK), lives and works in London. He currently teaches Fine Arts at London's Goldsmiths College, in 2008 he was awarded with the Turner Prize.

Selected solo exhibitions: 2015 UniAddDumThs, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; As If, Haus der Kunst, Munich; 2014 A Month of Making, Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York; Mark Leckey: Lending Enchantment to Vulgar Mate- rials, WIELS Contemporary Art Center, Brussels, 2013 On Pleasure Bent, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things, Hayward Touring: The Bluecoat, ; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea; 2012 Stills & Trailers, Galerie Buchholz, Cologne; Work & Leisure, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester; 2011 Mark Leckey: SEE, WE ASSEMBLE, Serpentine Gallery, London; 2010 GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York; Concrete Vache, Cabinet Gallery, London; 2009 Mark Leckey In The Long Tail, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; 2008 Cinema-in-the-Round, Guggenheim Museum, New York; Resident, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; 2007 Industrial Light & Magic, Le Consortium, Dijon; Dead or Alive, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne; 2005 Gorgeousness & Gorgeosity, Portikus,

Selected group exhibitions: 2015 Puddle, pothole, portal, Sculpture Center, Long Island City; 2013 Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Image Employment, MoMA PS1, New York; The Cat Show, White Columns, New York; The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th Venice Biennale, Venice The Objects, Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Glasgow; Analogital, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City; 2012 Ghosts in the Machine, New Museum, New York; White Ford Cotton, Cabinet, London; 2011 Push and Pull, The

Modern, London; Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven, Bureau for Open Culture; 2010 Moving Images: Artists & Video/Film, Museum Ludwig, Cologne; 2008, , London; Egypted, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; 2007 Sympathy for the Devil, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Alessandro Raho Alessandro Raho, born 1971 in Nassau (Bahamas), lives and works in London.

Selected solo exhibitions: 2015 Alison Jacques Gallery, London; Patrick de Brock Gallery, Knokke

Selected group exhibitions: 2014 I Cheer A Dead Man's Sweetheart, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhil-on-Sea; 2013 Knock Knock, Jerwood Gallery, Hastings; 2011 Painting Show, Eastside Gallery, Birmingham; 2008 Wall Rockets, FLAG Art Foundation, New York; 2007 Great Britons, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Press images Installation views for download at http://www.secession.at/presse

Contact Katharina Schniebs T. +43 1 587 53 07-10 F. +43 1 587 53 07-34 E-Mail: [email protected]

secession Wiener Secession, Association of Visual Artists Friedrichstraße 12, A-1010 Vienna, Austria T. +43-1-587 53 07, F. +43-1-587 53 07-34 [email protected], www.secession.at Tuesday – Sunday 10 am – 6 pm Permanent presentation: Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze

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