ABSTRACTION NOW
Andr�s Ram�rez Gavirias
Curated by
Norbert Pfaffenbichler and co-curators Sandro Droschl, Sixpackfilm and Lia and
Miguel Carvalhais, ABSTRACTION NOW brings together current non-representational
trends in art centered mostly on audiovisual media. The exhibition, excellently
organized by its curators, covers the work of a group of young artists who
display ingenious approaches to abstract themes, as seen not only through the
use of techniques afforded by new media, but also, in more noteworthy
instances, in relationship to some of the most outstanding artistic practices
of modernism.
Abstraction,
rarely used as a concept in current discourse, can be divided, from a historical perspective, into two
groups: on the one hand, organic, lyrical, and gestural works, and on the
other, their mathematical, precise, cerebral opposites.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> The artists represented in ABSTRACTION
NOW belong to the second group.
Influenced by the rigid accuracy of the abstract compositions of various
modernist movements, many of them associate abstraction with the language of
technology that has become available to them with the recent advent of the
computer age. Partly because of its minimalist contours, the creative act can
be more closely equated here to such figures as Piet Mondrian, Barnett Neuman,
Kenneth Noland, Ellsworth Kelly, Karl Andr�, among others, than to the
so-called "Expressionists" of the 1950s.
Most of
the references to trends in Modernism in the current exhibition are direct and
are the fundamental factor for grasping the nuances
within the various meanings of a work. A notable
example would be G�nther Selichar’s 1996 work, Who is afraid of Blue, Red, and Green
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>, which alludes to and
retextualizes Piet Mondrian’s theory of the use of yellow, red and blue (Composition
in Red, Yellow and Blue) as the underlying color structure of asymmetrical arrangements.
Selichar’s work consists of three panels illustrating the colors red, green and
blue–pulverized onto the surface rather than painted–in assorted vertical
strips. Today, many traditional art practices have been largely modified,by the
computer, which employs the RGB
(Red, Green and Blue) model to display on-screen information. The piece, with
its perceptive title, Who Is Afraid of Blue, Red, and Green
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>, when seen in the light of the
technical changes leading from Modernism to Post-Modernism,
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>takes on fundamental
significance.
Similarly,
the artist David Jourdan’s video loop Mechanics I know,
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>2003, draws parallels to the past,
using the game of Chromino (a game similar to dominos where the pieces are
matched by color rather than number) as its point of departure. The video makes
ironic comments about Concrete Art, a term coined by Van Doesburg in 1930 to
designate a group of artists working under the same manifesto. Concrete Art,
according to its representatives, is based on a mathematical logic where the
illustrated aspects consist of a uniform, exact, predictable sequence. Using an
aerial camera angle to mimic the flat appearance of a two-dimensional painting,
the artist parodies the Modernist movement by constructing a game/picture under
the rules of Chromino… in an unpredictable fashion.
Another
significant submission is 8 bit, by the RE-P.org, (Michael Aschauer, Maia Gusberti, Nik
Thoenen) collective. Located in the Passage Gallery, an exhibition space
connecting the K�nstlerhaus with the public area, the work has eight
fluorescent tubes turning a lot of
preprogrammed combinations on and off using a binary digital system. This
playful aspect of the structure lends itself to the exhibition’s general
aesthetics while further developing the minimalist concept of artists like Dan
Flavin.
ABSTRACTION
NOW, as the previous examples illustrate, is not just another unfurling of new
media art. Although most of the work – specially image based – is influenced in
some way by digital
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> technologies, the exhibition relies
heavily on the "classics" of art including painting, sculpture,
photography, etc., while at the same time revealing how media and style
diverge. The thirty
non-representational video and many other computer-based pieces on CD-ROM and
DVD, as well as selected Internet projects showing at the K�nstlerhaus-Kino and
Medialounge, respectively, are a significant plus for the exhibition.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">
With such
an abundant collection of national and international artists, it is easy to
view this sampling as an outstanding phenomenon within the contemporary art
world: another chapter in research
into abstraction as a thematic and aesthetic genre. At the start of the 21st
century, the present trend, led by the next generation,
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> is to be appreciated for its
relationship with modernist abstraction, but also in terms of a logic peculiar
to its own technological means. On the other hand, the K�nstlerhaus Wien, where
the exhibition is being held, was opened in 1945 as a cultural platform, but
has lately been having funding problems.
This will be the center’s last show — an ironic twist of fate, since the exhibition was one of the
best the center has held in recent years.
