Tag Archives: curators’ water

“Curators’ Water” at the Künstlerhaus

My installation “Curators’ Water” has made it into the Künstlerhaus, in Vienna. Hand-bottled water stands neatly in rows. The (numbered) labels pretend that this might be an edition, and that the bottles contain magic power for those who own, open, enjoy them. Effects may vary with personality – maybe it gives you wings, maybe not. This work is open to many possible interpretations. It plays with the liaison between the artist and the curator, for sure, and with the Christian promise of eternal life which – I’m citing the catalogue – finds its counterpart in admission to the art-historical canon. In the opening speech to his show “Du sollst dir ein Bild machen” (through 8 February), Günther Oberhollenzer, Künstlerhaus’s chief curator, offered this interpretation: “Lena Lapschina setzt sich – augenzwinkernd natürlich – mit dem heiligen Wasser auseinander, als kuratorisches Ritual. Ich finde das eine wunderbare Arbeit – weil Kuratoren manchmal wirklich wie Priester auftreten. Und dieses Augenzwinkern, das hat mir sehr, sehr gut gefallen.” / “Lena Lapschina explores – with a wink, of course – holy water as a curatorial ritual. I think it’s a wonderful work – because curators sometimes indeed do act like priests. And that wink – I really, really liked that!”

Of battery-powered chainsaws, Franz Kafka, curating, and the Art-Free Territory

I’ve sent an image scientist through my latest exhib in Austria, “Home Alone”. Here is what she brought back from the tour:

“Home Alone” is a fifty meter wide media installation, staged at the “Ausstellungsbrücke” (english: “Exhibition Bridge”) in Sankt Pölten, Lower Austria. It involves a “fitness zone”, a “living room”, a “museum”, and a “bar”. Each of these areas provide different levels of involvement to the visitors.

The show starts with a huge wall painting, depicting the exhibition’s intro text and a dozen company logos. Next to it resides the participatory video work “Get Fit With Dr. Lapschina”, which asks the visitors to work out. Stuff for engaging in the vigorous physical exercises is provided – as well as a bunch of museum benches, for people who prefer the lean-back mode.

The living room part of “Home Alone” has a comfy sofa suite, a large screen, several framed pictures on the walls, three lightboxes, a couple of books and catalogues on a coffee table, a hammock, and a bottle of wine to offer. The pictures don’t show anything though. They are only reminders. Also these aren’t regular lightboxes. Their role is to provide a distinct atmosphere to the place. And while the TV presents a 3′ loop version of Lena Lapschina’s video piece “Runtime”, it’s just the camo jacket for the smart home components everywhere in the room.

So, why not spend some time in the museum? Meticulously arranged vitrines give an impression of life in Lower Austria, in Manhattan or in Brooklyn, or elsewhere on this planet. It’s about dreams and nightmares, art and artists, battery-powered chainsaws and Franz Kafka, curating and the “Art-Free Territory”. It’s not immediately clear if the assemblage should be entertaining or disturbing. Like all museum stuff, in the first place it is educating, and that is what visitors find out during extended conversations in the bar and kitchen areas built into the flow of the “Home Alone” installation.

Some seldom shown pieces reunited for open studio show

During Vienna Art Week, I had a mini-show in a twelve-room apartment aka the Viennese studio. Old friends, like my neon sign “Girls wanted”, the pizza-boxed video series “17 Sekunden Kunst”, the Wittmann-manufactured cushions “Art-Free Territory” and the Mercedes-Benz tribute photo series “Communication”, joined forces with brand new stuff, like the installation “Curators’ Water”, the light-boxed photo series “Some things that long time do not exist” (Duratrans, light-box, crank), the xerography-inspired, Teheran-produced work “Role Models” (edition: 1), the photographed alphabet “Trees and poets, citified” (Dibond) and the post-future of painting series “Stuff”. Visitors also got a chance to preview the video series “Message to the World” while hanging out at the bar, and to engage in the participatory media installation “Get Fit With Dr. Lapschina”.
N.B.: “Thank you” to everyone who made this exhib possible, and especially to Mario Codognato for more than an hour of questions and answers.