Clemens Krauss ‘A Space’
temporary installation
25th March – 23rd April 2006, Tue – Fri 2 – 7 pm, Sat 11 am – 7 pm
Opening: 25th March 2006, 5 – 9 pm
DNA Berlin, Auguststraße 20, 10117 Berlin Mitte
http://www.dna-galerie.de/upcoming_overv.htm
press contact:
Bluhm PR
Fon: 49 (0)30 24 08 47 88
info@bluhmpr.de
With the opening of ‘A Space’, a three week long self imposed confinement ends for Clemens Krauss. Within this period Krauss will have painted all the walls of the gallery, which will resemble a huge fresco. The result is a wall painting measuring one hundred square meters which will be taken down at the end of the show, and therefore necessarily destroyed. Like Krauss’s paintings on canvas, ‘A Space’ appears like a large pictogram. Seemingly randomly arranged figures are applied directly onto the wall, which otherwise remains completely white.
The central concern in the work of Clemens Krauss is the human body. Due to his medical-biological background (Krauss holds both a medical degree and a degree in Fine Art) his investigations are often affected by natural science. Krauss uses his own body as a model for the figures in ‘A Space’, however he stresses that this isn’t self-portraiture. On the contrary, their characters are difficult to distinguish in terms of sex or age, and always remain anonymous. The arrangement of the figures follow re-enacted situations found in images from the world of fashion, sexuality and politics, however these situations are reinvented and recombined with infinite complexity. The individual becomes two, the pair becomes a group.
The body as a scene of identity, individuality and society is the fundamental concern of Krauss’s work. His work operates between performance, painting, photography and site specific installation, each approach sharing the same conceptual framework. The question of the relation between the outer appearance and inner life of the body has been expanded by Krauss in both his painting series ‘Das Körperkörper-Problem (The Bodybody-Problem) from 2004 – 2006 and in his series of photographs, entitled ‘Look-alikes’ (2004 – 2006). For ‘Look-alikes’ Krauss searched for genetically unrelated people who resembled one another. Another problematic of body representation and perception occurs in the performance piece ‘Sprechstunde (consultation hour)’. Here Krauss invites the spectator to participate in a private medical discourse with him, within the partition space of the museum or the gallery.
Clemens Krauss was born in 1978 in Graz, Austria, and now lives and works in Berlin and Vienna. For the last three years he has exhibited in national and international solo and group shows. Some of the exhibitions Krauss will make this year include, ‘Die Jugend von heute’ at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt/M. and ‘Anstoß Berlin’ at the Haus am Waldsee, Berlin.
The show ‘A Space’ is also part of the Special Guest program of the 4th Berlin Biennial.
