hans schabus and the very pleasure
Thursady 16 March | 8 pm
Padiglione Visconti,
Laboratori del Teatro alla Scala
Via Tortona 58, Milan
Artist | Hans Schabus with The Very Pleasure
Curator | Daniele Perra
Sponsored by ROBERTO DEL CARLO www.robertodelcarlo.it
On Thursday, 16 March 2006, one of the city of Milans most symbolic sites will host, for a single evening, a performance by the Austrian artist Hans Schabus (last years national representative for the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale) and by the very pleasure, a musical duo formed in 2004.
The event, curated by Daniele Perra, will be held at the Padiglione Visconti, a large, almost one-thousand-square-meter space that is part of the Laboratori del Teatro alla Scala, in the former industrial area of the Ansaldo steel-mills in Milan. The event has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Roberto Del Carlo, a prestigious line of Made in Italy accessories, which this year again, to coincide with the MICAM SHOEVENT International Exhibition of Shoe Wear (16-19 March, 2006), has decided to promote contemporary art by commissioning and financing this ambitious project.
Hans Schabus first collaborated with the very pleasure for his solo show at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2004. For this new performance starting at 8 p.m., together with the musical team consisting of Oliver Welter, the lead singer of the rock bank Naked Lunch, and Fritz Ostermayer, musician and radio producer, the artist will be offering a special sound and musical programme made up of original songs and famous cover versions, which all revolve around the theme of the mountain.
Furthermore, the sound event will be accompanied by a huge projection of the video work Val Canale. From the perspective of a flying helicopter, this 2005 video captures the extraordinary Val Canale area, historically and geographically the natural frontier between Austria and Italy. The work represents the symbolic voyage from Vienna, Schabus home city, to Milan, and carries within it both the spirit of the mountains and the physical substance of the route, underscoring the artists interest in spatial research and in the role of the viewer, who is called upon to undertake a journey in both the physical and metaphorical sense. In the past, with the work Western (2002), Schabus has travelled through Viennas sewer system in a small boat that he built himself, while in 2000, for the video Der Passagier (The Passenger), he created a miniature railroad track along his studio walls with real tunnels connecting one room to the next, simulating the hypothetical train journey undertaken by the final wagon. In an interview with the curator, Daniele Perra, given in 2003, Schabus affirmed that, “I want to understand space. I try to penetrate space, to destroy it. I want to expand space.”
Hans Schabus was born in Watschig (Austria) in 1970. He studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Vienna, the city where he lives and works. Among his solo shows: his representation of Austria at the 51st Venice Biennale with the project The Last Land, which endowed Josef Hoffmanns Austrian Pavilion with a new external architectural covering; Alles muss in Flammen stehen, Engholm Engelhorn Galerie, Vienna, 2005; Das Rendezvousproblem, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, 2004; Der Schacht von Babel, Kerstin Engholm Galerie, Vienna; Astronaut (komme gleich), Secession, Vienna; Zero Exit Status, Galleria Zero, Milan, 2003. A selection of 2005 group shows include: Night Sites, Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover, Germany; Entdecken und Besitzen. Einblicke in österreichische Privatsammlungen, MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; The Pantagruel Syndrome, T1 Torino Triennale Tremusei, Turin; Touristclass, Malmö Art Museum, Malmö, Sweden; Unterspiel, Alvin Balkind Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Scultura leggera/Light Sculpture, 503 mulino, Vicenza; U_Move. Utopia e immagine in movimento, Galleria Comunale dArte Contemporanea, Monfalcone.
Daniele Perra is an art critic and independent curator. He is the Managing Editor of the contemporary art magazine tema celeste, a contributor to the newspaper Il Sole-24 Ore (Sunday) and a teacher at the Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milan. He curated the first Italian solo show of Shahryar Nashat in collaboration with the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, Cantieri Culturali ex-Macelli, in Prato and the exhibition Project Room. A show without works / Una mostra senza opere at the Spazio Lima, in Milan in March 2005, subsequently hosted at La Box Bourges, Ecole Nationale Supérieure dArt de Bourges (December 2005-January 2006). He lives and works in Milan.
ROBERTO DEL CARLO: A passion for design, a profound knowledge of the techniques of shoe manufacture and a love for hand-crafted work sums up the philosophy of Roberto Del Carlo and is evident in the accessory collection that bears his name. The company, Roberto Del Carlo s.r.l., was created at the end of the 90s from the professional union of Roberto Del Carlo and Luigi Pierro with the objective of exclusively developing and consolidating the creative concept initiated by Roberto, an aim that was achieved through a very precise policy: extreme attention to the product and very selected commercial distribution. Roberto Del Carlo is one of the brands that best represents the Made in Italy label worldwide.
USEFUL INFORMATION
Title | hans schabus and the very pleasure When | Thursady 16 March, 8 pm Where | Padiglione Visconti, Laboratori del Teatro alla Scala, ex Ansaldo, Via Tortona 58, Milan. Entrance | Free
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