Wade Guyton, GuytonWalker, Kelley Walker
KUB Arena: On the Move: European Kunsthalle at the KUB Arena
27 April–30 June 2013
Kunsthaus Bregenz
Karl-Tizian-Platz
6900 Bregenz
Austria
Wade Guyton, GuytonWalker, Kelley Walker
The timing of the simultaneous Wade Guyton, GuytonWalker, Kelley Walker presentation could not be better. All three have been acclaimed in major solo exhibitions at eminent institutions in recent years and the intellectual and critical reception of their works is unanimous in its praise of the three distinct positions.
This exhibition is their first exclusive joint appearance and is thus all the more excitedly awaited. In contrast to their earlier practice in this show they will dispense with a segregation of the three artistic personae, which is otherwise strictly observed.
Surprising at first perhaps, a convincing logic nevertheless underlies this separation. For it simultaneously displays, underpins, and calls into question the concept of authorship, the role of which is not to be underestimated in the work of Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker. This is closely connected with topics such as authenticity and the duplication of the autonomous artwork in the form of editions or other types of multiple production and distribution.
Both Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker make use of found signs and images, which they transfer to canvas or wood panels as ink-jet or screen prints or transform into sculptures and installations.
Here too in GuytonWalker we find motifs from high and low culture. But from this the duo often develops paintings, objects, and installations that play with an impression of provisionality, chaos, the unfinished. Images and forms migrate and mutate. A painting may become a can, a sheet of printed drywall or a table.
The exhibition at Kunsthaus Bregenz presents a selection of Wade Guyton’s well-known X and stripe pictures, as well as Kelley Walker’s now legendary brick paintings and Rorschach works. All three personae have also developed new works.The presentation will avoid strict segregation of the three in favor of an interplay designed to bring out their similarities and differences. Above all, though, this deliberately fiery show values dialogue—not just between the three artists, but also with the public, whom it seduces in a way that is both intellectually and aesthetically entertaining.
KUB Arena: On the Move: European Kunsthalle at the KUB Arena
Founded in 2005 as a discursive platform without any fixed premises, the European Kunsthalle has developed its own forms of institutional action. As a contemporary art institution that combines a wide range of artistic procedures and interventions in current art and cultural debates, it exists wherever its projects take place.
In the exhibition at the KUB Arena it is precisely these aspects of performativity, of the appearance and disappearance of temporary artistic and institutional spaces, that are being focused on. Drawing on elements of past European Kunsthalle activities, on staging strategies and general questions around cultural, social, and institutional spaces, the participating artists developed a wealth of ways of looking at the principle of “eventfulness” and its implications.
After examining archive materials, Yane Calovski suggests a subjective reading of European Kunsthalle history in the drawings he has developed for the exhibition, while David Maljkovic focuses on engaging abstractly with exhibitory presentational forms. Stephen Willats transfers his ideas to the exhibition space in a version of the work specially conceived for the KUB Arena. The starting point of Johannes Wohnseifer’s work is his invitation to Mark Gonzales in 1998 to use specially created sculptures as ramps for a performance in the exhibition rooms of the Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, with a view to probing the boundaries between public and museum space. Additionally, both Nick Mauss and Charlotte Moth have developed new works for the Bregenz exhibition.
The exhibition architecture was designed by Dorit Margreiter together with the architect duo Luciano Parodi and Lina Streeruwitz.
Following the cooperation with the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in 2011, the KUB Arena’s present invitation is the second to an institution whose modes of work and program display many parallels with those of the KUB Arena itself.
Curated by Vanessa J. Müller & Astrid Wege (European Kunsthalle) and Eva Birkenstock & Yilmaz Dziewior (Kunsthaus Bregenz).
For further information: www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at
