Tag Archives: drawing

Art in the kindergarten


It took me several white nights to draw this little soulmate. A commission by Rakvere Rohuaia Kindergarten and the Kilomeeter Skulptuuri art-in-public-spaces programme, the mural is about eighteen meters in width and seven meters in height.

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.

“Waymarks & Dialogues” at Mardin Bienali

“İşaretler ve Diyaloglar” (“Waymarks & Dialogues”) is a situation-specific work for the 3rd Biennial in Mardin. Here, on the verge of Turkey, in the northernmost part of Mesopotamia, I’ve met with people and listened to conversations in order to record the most contemporary words in the various languages of Mardin. These words I’ve mounted in the medieval part of the city, in the narrow 1. Cadde (1st Lane), starting at the massive walls of Mor Efrem Manastırı. Intertwined with a series of lightboxes, which hide in the tiny workshops along 1. Cadde, a mythological footpath is formed. Visitors can discover both their history – and their destination.

Untitled (No. 407)

Murals tend to be huge, and artists like to do magnificent things. But not every patron of the arts has got these big walls. So I decided to develop murals which fit into c-suites and – even more important – into the private salon.

Today I want to share a new work which is private and public at the same time: “Untitled (No. 407)”. It’s a tape drawing commissioned by Arlberg Hospiz Hotel in Tyrol. To enjoy it for some nights, just ask for suite no. 407!

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.

Back on Tuesday

Dresden is celebrating the 8th edition of “Ostrale – Internationale Ausstellung zeitgenössischer Künste”, and I was asked to deliver an in situ work right at the entrance of this huge show at the old (and famous) slaugtherhouse. I did use tape again – red tape, to be precise.

The piece covers about 70 square meters. It shows a young lady, ornamental elements and a “writing on the wall” (which suggests that the artist might have vanished before completion). I could have called it “Selbstbildnis mit Auerhahn” (“Self portrait with grouse”), which would have been kind of correct. But I thought I should place emphasis on the text part. The display tag now says “Back on Tuesday”.

Catalogue.

War Artist in Residence

A new tape drawing I’ve done in Greifswald reflects the re-enactment of Abu Ghraib in Ukraine. The mural in the tradition of war artists bears the title “Und plötzlich war es wieder da”. It is part of this year’s “conquering places” art laboratory.