markus schinwald

first published by a virtual biennale, line magazine

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Markus Schinwald’s work focuses on the movements of the body - especially the ways in which these movements are governed by props and various surroundings. Furthermore, the artist extends this to an interest in the way the human body is embedded in cultural context, which expands into a psychological analysis. These specific preoccupations have culminated in Schinwald’s Biennale exhibition, for which he has created a labyrinthine environment, which houses and dictates the viewing of his painted, sculptural and filmic works. Schinwald classes this space intervention not as ‘an autonomous act,’ but rather ‘a kind of stage system or environment for the display of different works.’ Thus, the Austrian pavilion manifests as a stage/performer collaboration; the labyrinth becomes a platform, and the various works become the players. In his own words:

‘Though the pavilion was designed as a complete work, the individual works are not damned to be together forever. The paintings are a little bit more flexible on their own, and I'm trying to shift their emphasis with different projects in that they are sometimes more autonomous and sometimes marginal, like props. The architecture would hypothetically function on its own, similar to Bruce Nauman's corridors, but I like it as a type of punctuation.’

Schinwald’s construction is based on the principle of partitioning. By precisely positioning partition walls that hang from the ceiling, roughly down to navel height, the artist disrupts our everyday movement routines. The construction appears as an inverted labyrinth, which aims for spatial, bodily and emotional irritation, luring visitors into a maze of hollow alleys and narrow tube-like passage-ways. This use of long corridors and mis-leading spaces also cleverly mirrors the city of Venice itself, ‘aware of the Venitian way of “getting lost” in the  narrow alleys and streets.’ Because Schinwald employs white walls  suspended from the ceiling rather than sprouting from the floor, he creates an undeniable focus on the lower half of the human body. While walking around the exhibition, one can see a series of disembodied legs. This is further referenced by Schinwald’s suspended sculptures of severed Chippendale chair legs. The disconcerting focus is, according to Schinwald, a ‘sub-theme’ of the exhibition, decided upon by the artist in order to upend our concentration of the upper half of our bodies, despite our physical dependence upon our legs: ‘I think there is perhaps an uneven focus on the upper part of the body, and I wanted to shift concentration onto the lower half, which we use mainly for transportation and sexual activities. When you split the body in half, focusing on the mute half becomes some kind of choreography.’

The paintings that Schinwald displays in his architectural labyrinth have a disquieting, archaic despondence. Painted with muted tones, the artist reworks 19th century portraits, lithographs and nudes, affixing each figure with a ‘prostheses.’ He veils a woman’s head in white linen, or forces another woman into a correct posture by means of a chain and a leather prothesis around her chin. These images evoke a sense of anxiety, largely instigated by the understated acceptance of Schinwald’s painterly victims.

Of the filmic element of the Austrian pavilion Schinwald says: ‘if the novel is the literary equivalent of the feature film, then Orient is a kind of visual counterpart of the poem. The protagonists don’t act in a linear temporal sequence of events, but understand themselves as phrases of an emotional discourse.’ Orient is set in an unreal artificial ruin, in which modern architectural elements are integrated in a dilapidating hall. Five protagonists, in turn, move about the space, with motions that lie somewhere between slapstick and modern dance. Seemingly random moves will suddenly flow into abstract choreography, and serene gestures will suddenly become ridiculous. The film is subtle, and manages to avoid contrivance, the exaggerated postures and quiet rituals revealing themselves as a metaphor of an invisible demonstration of autonomy. Schinwald himself claims that he does not ‘wish to interpret too much into the film [himself], but what interested [him] was to take a ruin, a symbol of decay and abandonment, and use it against itself.’ 

Markus Schinwald has idiosyncratically described the work as ‘the head in neurosis, the crotch in psychosis.’ Despite its purposeful obscurity, Schinwald himself calling it ‘a rather crude metaphor’, this phrase fits perfectly, depicting a ‘schizophrenic side of the architecture.’ The exhibition is neurotic in the extreme, creating a matrix of self-awareness, second-guessing, realisation and disturbance, while simultaneously, one seems to float, at a complete loss from external reality. 

personal structures

first published by a virtual biennale, line magazine

www.avirtualbiennale.tumblr.com

“Here is the blood,” he said. When I heard him say it, I thought, “Oh fuck!” I had feared this moment from the very beginning, and now I would be served my blood. I opened my mouth, slowly. My lips and tongue, the whole inside of my mouth and actually my entire body, I felt everything longing for this taste. I opened my mouth. The blood…, what a fantastic fluid! It was a little cold, but it was this thick, really nice tasting, wonderful liquid. My mouth was anxious, as if the complete surface of the inside of my mouth was full of desire to get all the taste. My tongue reached inside this stream of blood that was flowing into my mouth. It was filling my cheeks and I let as much of this blood inside my mouth as possible, to taste it as intense as I could, everywhere in my mouth. This was such a fantastic experience. This was so erotic. This was so unlike anything I had ever tasted. This was wonderful.’  - Karlyn de Jongh

“Now, you will be given the blood”, Nitsch’s son told me. Finally I would find out how this would be. I had been a little nervous about the blood; its taste and the smell. “Open up your mouth”; I obeyed. For the sensation I was about to feel, I could not have been prepared for. I never had even thought about this possibility at all. The feeling of getting blood poured into my mouth was more than surprising, the cool substance felt fantastic. This creamy liquid, filling the cavity of my mouth, running down along the side of my face onto my neck, this felt highly erotic. Immediately I wanted more, but I could not ask for it, I had to wait. Having the taste of blood still in my mouth, I was trying to think what it reminded me of; it tasted like the smell of raw meat, and there was this saltiness to it. I cannot remember how often exactly I was given blood whilst lying on my table, but it must have been several times. I felt at peace. This sensation was every time so strong, I could have laid there forever while being fed with blood.’  - Sarah Gold

Proposed as an exhibition dedicated to the ‘concepts of Time, Space and Existence,’ ‘Personal Structures’ boasts an impressive list of participating artists: Marina Abramović, Carl Andre, Joseph Kosuth, Hermann Nitsch and Lawrence Weiner amongst the 28. Each room of the Palazzo Bembo is dedicated to one artist, creating strong divisions between the various evaluations, aesthetics and atmospheres. 

Marina Abramović presents Confession, a 60 minute video-loop in which the artist stares at a motorised donkey, while her ‘confession’ text scrolls along the bottom of the screen. The film is captivating in its slow, progressive revealing of Abramović’s intimate family secrets. The majority of the artists produced new artworks for ‘’Personal Structures’’, such as Joseph Kosuth’s site-specific work which features quotations from Samuel Beckett, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Ruskin. The fact that these works are entirely contemporary and presented in such a segregate manner results in an engaging exhibition which, in fact, manifests as a series of ‘mini-exhibitions.’

Specifically, the room dedicated to the work of Hermann Nitsch presents such a self-fulfilled environment, that the exhibition is momentarily forgotten as a collaborative effort. Nitsch presents his 130th Aktion, which involves the two Dutch curators of ‘Personal Structures’, Karlyn de Jongh and Sarah Gold. As ‘passive actors’ the two women were led through one Nitsch’s famous crucifixion re-enactments - blindfolded, naked and bound to separate crosses. 

The elaborate performance requires hundreds of helpers, dead squid, pigs, octopi and 300 litres of blood - which the women drink, while erected on their crosses. Accompanying the photographic and film documentation of the event itself, are two written accounts of the day: one by Sarah Gold and one by Karlyn de Jongh. Both women savour the experience, claiming it as ‘erotic’; the blood as a ‘wonderful liquid’ which they became extremely aroused by. Their personal accounts are intensely personal - possibly uncomfortably so, revealing every intimate, sordid thought reflected on over the course of the day-long performance. 

As ‘passive’ actors, de Jongh and Gold were required to be as neutral as possible, just ‘Being, and being used.’ The ‘active’ actors swarmed around the blindfolded women, in what looks like a frantic, irrational manner, but every ‘active’ detail was ordered by Nitsch. Intestines, livers, kidneys,  pigs, octopi, tomatoes, grapes and strawberries were thrown onto the bodies of the passive women, and they describe the feelings of each substance with fervour. The pig is a vast carcass, slowly and deliberately lowered onto the naked bodies, which at the end of the ‘Aktion’ the performers were allowed to cook and eat. While Nitsch plans his ‘active’ movements, he cannot plan the ‘passive’ reaction, and this was the first time that two women had sex during one of his ‘Aktions.’  Lying amidst a pool of blood, with hundreds of people watching, urging and filming, Gold and De Jongh gradually found themselves having sex. In their written accounts of this event, they both seem strong willed, so aroused by ‘the blood, sliding,’ that this felt like an inevitability. Although, watching the two blindfolded women on the film, their actions looks hesitant, less self-assured, and  awkward.

Watching Nitsch’s ‘Aktion’ feels like an intrusion. It is the epitome of voyeurism; seeing the two central characters blindfolded and guided through controversial procedures. However, this intimate observation is displaced by the hundreds of people who are also present in the film, dressed in bright white but soaked in red blood, sponging the skin of the women, gently goading them into various positions. It is a complex confusion of pornography, masochism, perversion, contrivance, freedom and sub-ordinance. These elements become more disconcerting when one learns that these two women are the curators of the exhibition; knowing their specific presence makes the ‘Aktion’ resonate on a new level, understanding them as people rather than ‘passive actors.’ 

Each room in the Palazzo Bembo offers its own engaging exhibition, with eminent artist appearing after eminent artist. That the exhibition is dedicated to ‘Time, Space and Existence’ is, inevitably, unclear throughout. However, with such a broad concept that can be examined in numerous ways, and extended to limitless subjects and possibilities, that does not feel like so much of a downfall. 

Interview with Curators Sarah Gold and Karlyn de Jongh

Kathryn Lloyd: Could you explain why you were so interested in curating an exhibition which deals with the ambiguous concepts Time, Space and Existence, and how you selected artists who specifically explore these ideas? 

Sarah Gold & Karlyn de Jongh: The concepts Time, Space and Existence are important for human beings in general. With our project ‘’Personal Structures’’ we address these themes in contemporary art, trying to heighten people’s awareness of their own personal Existence as human beings within a specific Space and Time.

For ‘Personal Structures’, we selected artists on the basis of them being very dedicated and sincerely working with either Time Space or Existence for a number of years. In this exhibition we present different perspectives towards these concepts, by artists from different parts of the world and from different generations. This means that it is not relevant if the artworks we present are aesthetically pleasing to us or not. Rather, it is the ideas and the sincerity in the execution of the artworks which convinced us.

KL: You have produced an extremely impressive exhibition in terms of the participating artists: Marina Abramovic, Carl Andre, Joseph Kosuth etc., and you have curated the exhibition so that each room of the Palazzo Bembo is dedicated to a singular artist. Why did you make this decision to create such a separated exhibition environment?

SG & KDJ: ‘Personal Structures’ is an open platform with which we attempt to give artists the opportunity to present their work. Our exhibition is therefore a group-presentation of single statements. We gave each artist their own space and the freedom to do with that space what they wanted. The artist has the control over their own space and can focus on what they wants to say. Most of the artists took this opportunity to make a work especially for that specific space and some – Joseph Kosuth and Rene Rietmeyer, for example – even created their work within the exhibition space itself. In this way, it was possible to create strong site-specific statements. Having 24 rooms, Palazzo Bembo is a perfect location for our exhibition. Walking through the exhibition, the visitor gets a new impression each time he enters a room, a different perspective towards Time, Space and Existence. The viewer can concentrate on the individual artists, without any interference between the different works. 

KL: As well as curating ‘Personal Structures’, you also participated in Hermann Nitsch’s 130th Aktion. Watching this performance, and reading your accounts of the day in question, it appears to be an extremely intense experience. How has your perception of the piece changed through seeing it in a gallery environment? 

SG & KDJ: During the Aktion we were blindfolded. We did not see anything of what was happening around us. Instead, we felt, heard, tasted and smelled what was going on. The photos and film that were made of Nitsch’s Aktion allowed us to also see the artwork of which we were part ourselves. Seeing it here in the photos and video shows how aesthetically impressive and intense Nitsch’s performance is. 

KL: Do you find it difficult to witness the piece in this context, after the event itself?

SG & KDJ: To us it is not difficult to see the 130th Aktion in the context of this exhibition. On the contrary: it is a delight. Although the performance took place more than a year ago and it feels to us far away, seeing it in the exhibition space reminds us every day of what Nitsch wants to say. It reminds us to live our life more consciously, to experience it to the maximum with all our senses and to share life together with others. 

KL: Do you find any difficulties in participating in the exhibition as well as curating it? Even though you are not participating artists, you provide a crucial role in Hermann Nitsch's piece. Additionally, do you think that the fact you are curators of the exhibition, changes the way in which viewers regard that particular work?

SG & KDJ: In the exhibition we show Nitsch’s 130th Aktion in a series of photos, a video and two texts we wrote very honestly and openly about our experience of being part of this event. It is a unique, personal presentation of Nitsch’s work. Even though Nitsch has been creating his “Orgien Mysterien Theater” for more than 40 years, we noticed that for several visitors it is still quite shocking to witness and there is still quite a lot of misunderstanding surrounding it. By having spent time with Nitsch for our project “Hermann Nitsch: Under My Skin”, we gained more knowledge about his thoughts and work. Being in Palazzo Bembo every day ourselves, we speak with many visitors and try to explain to them very directly from our own personal experience about his work, which then often encourages them to look closer into what Nitsch is actually about.

venice in venice

first published for a virtual biennale, line magazine

www.avirtualbiennale.tumblr.com

On the centennial of the naming of Venice, California, and the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, curators Tim Nye and Jacqueline Miro have transported a group of artists whose ‘impossibly cool’ work sprang from the desolate shores of 1960s Venice, California to the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. Los Angeles in the 60s saw artists draw inspiration from sunlight, the reflective surface of the ocean, car and surfboard cultures, and the influx of new technologies introduced by the local engineering and aerospace industries. Artists began experimenting with industrial materials in order to explore new possibilities for perception, light and illusion. Thus, an inevitable concern with water, and a subsequent shared unique luminosity, links the two cities of Venice. Either/or, in Goethe’s words: ‘Venice(s), like everything else which has a phenomenal existence, is subject to Time...’ to Light and Space. And Fetish.

The exhibiting artists are internationally renowned -   including James Turrell, Vija Celmins, Ed Ruscha, Robert Graham and Andy Warhol, to name a few. In total, there are 68 works, some of which are characteristic of their creators, such as James Turrell’s ‘Cross Corner Projection’ and George Herms’s various sculptural assemblages. Vija Celmins’s, however, breaks away from her monochrome drawings, and demonstrates her sculptural skill with the 1967 work Eraser. 

In essence, some of the works themselves are interesting, beautiful or spiritual and demonstrate a ‘cool’ use of the minimalist aesthetic. However, the difficulty comes with collectivity. Together, the works become a self-indulgent oeuvre, completely detached from reality. It immediately feels that everything is being taken too seriously, with ostentatious phrases spattered all over the information sheets: ‘the iris argon lights of Laddie John Dill will ooze from the baroque windows, the acoustic sounds of psychedelia [will] reverberate off the blackness of Venice’s waters.’ And it seems entirely devoid of irony - something which John Baldessari and David Hockey could have effectively contributed (although originally billed as participants, they are not actually present in the exhibition.)

It is important here to note that the majority of these works were created in the 60s. And although ‘Venice in Venice is not a re-creation, but an homage—an event that only the art, politics, and technical progress of the last 50 years can bring to life at a single event,’ it manifests like a redundant shrine to an outdated art fashion.  The reiteration of the minimalist aesthetic is tedious; Mary Corse’s ‘white inner band’ paintings, Larry Bell’s glass boxes, Peter Alexander’s resin panels. There can be no doubt of the importance of these works in the 60s, and the participants are so established it would probably be sacrilege to ruthlessly criticise their work individually. Indeed, James Turrell’s The Ganzfeld Piece is an excellent contribution to Bice Curiger’s ILLUMInations exhibition, effectively challenging our notion of what is really present. However, in ‘Venice in Venice’, Turrell’s work becomes an exhausted repetition of an overused aesthetic and ideology. 

The ideology itself is summarised in a quotation from Billy Al Bengston: ‘it’s about artists in Venice, CA who made things based upon an entirely unique vision - art. Not based on your car, your house, your sky, your woman, your tears, your anguish, your angst, or any other reference to the human condition.’ Ergo, it is art about art - a postulation which once felt intelligent and serene, and still can in moderation, feels obsolete at the 2011 Venice Biennale. The nature of the Biennale incites an engagement with the socio-political discourses pertaining to representing countries - demonstrated by numerous participants this year, such as Iraq, Israel, Romania, Poland, Greece and Haiti. Thus, with artists such as Azad Nanakeli engaging with the threatening drought in his country in the Iraqi Pavilion, ‘Venice in Venice’ suddenly looks like a misplacement of responsibility. 

According to the curators, ‘once the event touches down in Venice, Italy, the art world will never be quite the same.’ This presumptuous statement is indicative of the ultimate pitfalls of the exhibition. It is self-indulgent, overly aware of its own (mis-placed) importance, and despite its aim to ‘link’ the two cities of Venice, it is too insular to have any relevance in 2011. 

the sleeping city

first published by a virtual biennale, line magazine

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Title: Czech and Slovak Republic: The Sleeping City

Artist: Dominik Laing

Curator: Yvonna Ferencová

Venue: Giardini

‘My father was a sculptor. He had stopped working long before I was born. His sculptures were more like sleeping witnesses than living work. With their help I am trying to look into my own past, which is at the same time a portrait of collective memory. I am thus construing an inter-generational dialogue in retrospect, a dialogue which in reality never came to pass.’ - Dominik Lang

The selection process for Dominik Lang to represent the Czech and Slovak Republics at the Biennale was a long one, and not without controversy. His proposal entitled 'The Sleeping City' was initially chosen by an expert committee put together by the National Gallery, but the choice was later rejected by the gallery’s highly-opinionated director Milan Knížák, who then attempted to replace him with various other notable Czech artists. This incident caused the Czech Culture minister Jiří Besser to usurp Knížák’s authority, claiming the expert committee’s choice needed to be respected. Despite this defiant support, the Biennale experience has not been easy one for Lang, who described the episode as ‘unpleasant’, although he was surprised by his initial selection and thus, not surprised by the subsequent problems. 

However, from an external viewpoint it is difficult to understand where the difficulties arose with The Sleeping City. Fundamentally, the installation is Lang’s investigation into his past, his father’s past and the historic past of his country. Lang links two different sculptural approaches - his more architectural practice alongside his father’s figurative sculptures - with various historical contexts, against the backdrop of his family dynamic. Through the fragmented presentation of his father’s work - which he has severed, alienated, constrained and disrupted - Lang develops a fictitious inter-generation dialogue, which speaks about the relationship between father and son, as well as their differing epochs. 

Jiří Lang (1927-1996) stopped creating work years before his son was born. His artistic practice is often said to be marked by the period in which it was created, due to material constraints as well as ideological ones. Dominik Lang has taken these generic, postwar figurative sculptures, and provided them with an entirely new, fractured environment. A penguin-like figure is given crutches and a bubble-wrap neck brace, a girl with her dog is severed at her middle by a wooden table, small heads are severed and propped on poles, and some sculptures are obscured by curtains or body bags. This does not manifest as an homage to an admired father, nor an understated talent. Instead, there is a sense of ridicule; a sobering suggestion of the redundancy that awaits the majority of art work produced at any given point in time. 

The Sleeping City initially proffers a melancholy reflection of the obscurity of the art object, and the Lang father/son dialogue gives this statement an added rawness. As Lang states, this is ‘a dialogue which in reality never came to pass.’ The strange concoction of indifference and devotion, of disrespect and reverence, reveals a difficult paternal relationship - something which Dominik Lang appears to have clinically and brutally assessed. However, it is Lang’s ‘almost-too-personal’ approach which is the crux of his attempt to emphasise the impossibility of ‘a free treatment of material closed in its own terms.’ That is to say, while Jiří Lang’s work is often considered too entrenched in its own context, his son’s intervention is attempting to disturb it, to create a ‘new method of reading it’, to make it relevant again in a different way.

Dominik Lang’s presentation is either a desolate protestation about the human incapability to create endurance, or it defies this by asserting the continual importance of artwork through re-contextualisation, disturbance and (mild) destruction. Furthermore, it questions the relationships between different generations and epochs - challenging their parallels, and differences, asking whether we are detached from our past or embedded in it. Either way, it seems difficult to understand Milan Knížák’s objections to the installation. The Sleeping City is a matrix of interpretations, each one as interesting as the last.