Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber
“With Bitter and Weber, the image, the representation of an ideology of the gaze, is thus repeatedly the scene of an aesthetic intervention that defines this image as a moment for action and a field of action in the area of socio-political terrain – whereby this terrain also becomes aesthetic is marked. The image is a place of struggle for power, a place of the production of meaning, a space of expression, which – as in the case of the series mentioned – ‘transparency’ as an agent of the ideology of modernism (as a fiction of knowledge, as a comprehensive ‘Police’). However, this visual and aesthetic ideology is not replaced by a counter-image that would supposedly obey different laws.
(from Reinhard Braun, Machines of Transparency)
to the work:
All Will Be Well: Religion-Industries
Untitled (currently) New spaces of the social
BOULEVARDS, BANLIEUES AND OTHER SAMPLES OF DECORATED HISTORIES
Isa Rosenberger
Isa Rosenberger deals with socio-political developments in her artistic work. The artist is particularly interested in political upheavals and their social and economic consequences.
A basic theme is the question of the construction of reality and, in this context, of the power of images. Rosenberger questions the relationship between internalized, “mental” and medially conveyed images with the aim of creating different, alternative stories and readings of history (and the present). For example, she examines the perception of ideologically charged monuments and architectures and how these are changing. When dealing with a topic, the artist juxtaposes images that represent different perspectives. Through the change of perspective, these lose none of their respective meaning, but their ideological power becomes reflective and thus questionable.
Oliver Ressler
The artist, filmmaker and political activist Oliver Ressler positions his work in an extraordinary way both in the context and at the locations of the so-called anti-globalization movement as well as in art institutions and at film festivals. Trained as a visual artist, Ressler was already active in the public space in the early 1990s, where he exercised politically confrontational criticism of the Austrian government, which was increasingly right-wing, nationalistic and hostile to asylum seekers and migrants. A few years later, inspired by the legendary protests against the WTO (World Trade) Conference in Seattle in 1999, Ressler’s field of interest and scope of action expanded radically, which, ironically, makes him a truly “global” artist today.
(from the foreword of the catalog “Kartografien des Protests”, which was published in connection with the exhibitions in LENTOS Museum Linz; in NBK – Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin; in Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo – CAAC, Seville and ar / ge kunst Galerie Museum / Galleria Museo, Bozen / Bolzano)
Gerold Tusch
In his artistic practice, Gerold Tusch stages a historical repertoire of forms based on a contemporary understanding and thus draws attention to the somewhat outdated genres of decor and handicrafts, which have mostly played a secondary role in art history. He often makes use of baroque forms, which – because they mainly served for representation or glorification – are often only ascribed the role of decorative accessories. In a process of detaching and renegotiating these forms, Tusch develops independent positions. He removes ornamental or decorative objects such as ostentatious vases, arabesques, rocailles or various floral and vegetable elements from their context, isolates them, examines their formal and content-related effect and uses them creatively.
(www.belvedere.at)