March 10–May 26, 2018
CMRK is a network of four independent institutions for contemporary art based in Graz: Camera Austria, Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien (KM– Graz), < rotor >, and Grazer Kunstverein.
Horáková + Maurer: TPX-Index
Camera Austria
March 10–April 29, 2018
www.camera-austria.at
The Remains of Cinema
Künstlerhaus
Halle für Kunst & Medien (KM– Graz)
February 10–April 22, 2018
www.km-k.at
https://journal.km-k.at/en/posts/
responseABILITY
Artists of the AiR programme West Balkan Calling
< rotor >
March 10–May 26, 2018
www.rotor.mur.at
Carl Johan Högberg: She Who Speaks
Niamh O’Malley: Foiled Glass
Grazer Kunstverein
March 10–May 19, 2018
www.grazerkunstverein.org
The works shown for the first time in this exhibition at Camera Austria go back to the years 1996 to 2000, when Tamara Horáková + Ewald Maurer started intensively exploring the properties of Polaroid TPX radiographic instant film, which lends the project its name. It is an exposure technique originating from the medical field or security sector, which sees through the things that, in this sense, pretends to represent a certain truth of things. In this way, Horáková + Maurer open up a “game” involving methods, representation, perception, and readability that situates the photographic images at the threshold of their representational possibilities. Along this boundary, the relations between photography and renderability become unstable and are subjected to an experimental probing. Horáková + Maurer intervolve the production and reproduction processes so strongly that the photographic images basically arise at the crossroads between the two, as a superimposition, an interference, sometimes even a disruption. In this respect, the practice of the artists is at once as theoretical and tangible as possible, at once real and autonomous—and with this practice, they have for years now assumed an extraordinarily independent position of thinking and showing the photographic in equal measure.
The exhibition is accompanied by an eponymous publication from the Edition Camera Austria, comprising 256 pages, 117 duotone images, and a text by Reinhard Braun in German and English.
Crossing genres and generations, this exhibition at Künstlerhaus – Halle für Kunst & Medien contrasts historical and contemporary artistic positions with selected examples of historical films, in order to trace the impact and resonance of cinema on art and “cultural memory.” Without a doubt, the enormous social relevance of film—the leading medium of the twentieth century—belongs to the past. Today, cinema is just one of many types of pop-cultural entertainment, just a continuous flow in a chain of synchronized market segments.
The thematic show presents hybrid passions and individual obsessions revolving around the cinematic cosmos. The artworks in the show address “The Remains of Cinema,” subjecting them to diverse transformational processes, and thus paying critical tribute to them. Besides films, the exhibition gathers a selection of film-specific works of art and artifacts left behind by the cinematic world, whereby the object and fetish character of these artifacts, as well as their specific materiality, is of primary interest.
The Remains of Cinema is an extensive show, studded with prominent artists, curated by Sandro Droschl and Norbert Pfaffenbichler, and produced in collaboration with the Austrian Film Museum and the Diagonale, the festival of Austrian film, which will also present a companion film program. The project will be accompanied by the new online journal from the Künstlerhaus – Halle für Kunst & Medien, further exploring the show’s themes.
With John Baldessari, Erica Baum, Joseph Beuys, Jörg Buttgereit, Anne Collier, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Karl Holmqvist, Ito Ryusuke, Björn Kämmerer, Johann Lurf, Bernd Oppl, Katrin Plavčak, Eric Rondepierre, Constanze Ruhm, Hans Scheugl, Viktoria Schmid, Michaela Schwentner, Haim Steinbach, John Stezaker, Mika Taanila, and Antoinette Zwirchmayr
From 2015 to 2016, the artist-in-residence program “West Balkan Calling” took place in Belgrade, Cetinje, Pristina, Sarajevo, Skopje, and Tirana, as well as in Graz, Klagenfurt, Krems, Linz, and Vienna. A total of 12 artists visited the cities mentioned above for a residency. During this time, they realized works of art and/or were inspired to create new works, which will be presented in the exhibition responseABILITY at < rotor >. In parallel to this, a twelve-part poster series will be published.
The observations and individual experiences made within the guest artists’ residencies form the starting point of the exhibition. They could check their expectations, compare them with their impressions on site, and put them into relation to their own living environments. Moreover, the mutual exchange opened up an opportunity to compare perceptions of the different cultural spaces.
With Stefano Romano/DZT, Dante Buu, Veronika Eberhart, Nina Valerie Kolowratnik, Marko Kosović, Wolfgang Obermair, Danilo Prnjat, Gregor Schlatte, Deniz Soezen, tadi, Inge Vavra, and Velimir Zernovski.
Grazer Kunstverein is presenting two exhibitions dedicated to reflection and contemplation, marking a new year of artistic programming that begins in Spring 2018.
She Who Speaks by Carl Johan Högberg is an exhibition that orbits around the myth and legacy of Hélène Smith, a clairvoyant well known in 19th century Switzerland who supposedly communed with Martians and inspired Surrealists from Paris to Geneva. Striking a kinship across historical time, Högberg’s exhibition explores the ethics of interpretation, the medium of mediation, and the impossibility of hearing one’s true voice or meeting one’s gaze directly across the great storm of history. Högberg, in residence at the Grazer Kunstverein throughout the Spring Season, presents a new iteration of this ongoing body of work, comprised of paintings, tapestries, and sculptural installations.
Niamh O’Malley’s artwork reveals a profound appreciation for the act of trying. Trying to catch a certain slant of light, trying to prove a pattern or uncover a composition, trying to fathom a mountain, trying to hold time still. Through the moving image, mark-making, and sculptural materials, it is this act of trying, in the face of predictable failure, that gives way to conviction and a sense of hope within the artist’s work. Full of reflection, both literal and metaphorical, filled with absence and framed by negative space, O’Malley’s work asserts something unstoppable about the human spirit. Foiled Glass is O’Malley’s first major exhibition in Austria. It includes the presentation of a selection of video and sculptural work dating from 2013 to the present, and a new site-specific painting along the exterior of the Grazer Kunstverein.
