KUNST STOFFwith Gada Amer, Polly Apfelbaum, Sabine Boehl, Alighiero Boetti, Louise Bourgeois, Rainer Ganahl, Gudrun Kampl, Claes Oldenburg/Coosje van Bruggen, Kim Sooja, Füsun Onur, Tal R, Jessica Stockholder, Rosemarie Trockel, Cosima von Bonin
and traditional textiles from Ikat, Indonesia, Kaitag, Daghestan, Kesa, Japan, Quilt, Pennsylvania, Suzani, Uzbekistan, ...

Group Exhibition

Introduction
Prof. Elisabeth von Samsonow, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna

CURATORSProf. Elisabeth von Samsonow and Rosemarie Schwarzwälder

ART DISCUSSIONGilbert Bretterbauer, Vienna
Gerburg Treusch-Dieter, Berlin
Erwin Wurm, Vienna
Elisabeth von Samsonow, Vienna, moderation

22 Apr 2004

Grünangergasse 1

1010 Vienna

3 Mar – 24 Apr 2004

Which is why textile arts must come first.”

– Gottfried Semper

read inGerman

KUNST STOFF

A contemporary definition of the relation between textile and fine art can be traced back to Gottfried Semper's radical thesis contending that textiles are the only real creative art form from which all other arts in an infinite series of mimetic attempts at outperformance are destined to derive – though here we are not concerned with a mere confirmation of this claim, but rather with the effects, stimulations, overlappings, and reiterations contemporary art, for its part, contributes to the examination and the application of the material. The history of our fetishism with the artistic material can be seen as a multitude of lines of which there are primarily two – namely, one that became completely entranced by the visual design of the fabric, and one that saw in it a skin substitute or body equivalent – that possess relevancy for modernism and postmodernism.

As to the visuality of the fabric, it is composed of the texture itself, and is in this sense identical to the knit, which consists of a certain interweaving of colored threads. This crisscross of threads in its evocation of a cryptic universal script, reveals itself inevitably as the minimum of every organization that has complexity as a determinant. With these crisscrosses the open spaces become restructured to euclidean and geographic spaces, which means they have generative, more far-reaching potencies, which in the wake of panel paintings transfixed “abstract” painters as if to hypnotize them. The slants and knottings of the threads in the textile anticipate all possible interpretations of the spatial in two-dimensionality.

Thus while some endeavor to uncover the whirring visual message in the medium of the applied and to translate (reconstruct) the logic of texture within the canon of arts in a process that Semper would have called the shifting of material, what others immediately see in the textile, in the material, is its suitability as an organic extension of the body itself: one can capitalize on the binomial of body/clothing, which can be applied like nothing else for the benefit of an extended body knowledge. Here the shifting of material is indeed the shift between “soft” similar textures, between the (connective) tissue of the body and its artificial reflection in its intimate spaces, in its shells. Lately we even see young artists turning to sewing, thus in an astounding way shortening the path through the obstacle course of the performative stages as body art.
This exhibition is an attempt to gain a new understanding of the tensions in a triangular relation between the textile, the visual and constructive logic of the images, and the intimate space of the body in a mise-en-scène between contemporary and traditional cultural positions.

—

Elisabeth von Samsonow

SABINE BOEHL, geb. 1974 in Darmstadt, lebt in Düsseldorf. “Die eigene Intention liegt in einer Verwebung von Bildzeichen in Form von farbigen Glasperlen, monochrom mit Nagelack bestrichenen Farbtafeln, einzelnen Plexiglasmodulen. Das formale Bestreben liegt gleichermaßen begründet in der Auseinandersetzung mit den antiken Mosaiken, pompejanischen Wandmalereien, den Dekorationen des Domus Aurea von Nero in Rom, den grotesken Ornamenten Raffaels wie mit ornamentalen Strukturen.” (2003)

ALIGHIERO BOETTI, geb. 1940 in Turin, gest. 1994 in Rom, Italien. “Ich beschäftige mich jetzt mit afghanischen Arazzi, so wie Tamerlango, Attila, Djingis Chan, Khubilai Chan sie unter den Sattel legten, um ihre kleinen tartarischen Pferde zu reiten. Es sind über und über farbige Arazzi, voller Buchstaben.” (1982)

LOUISE BOURGEOIS, geb. 1911 in Paris, lebt in New York. “Als sei Stoff eine Epidermis eigenen Rechts, verwendet Louise Bourgeois überwiegend eigene Kleidungsstücke zur Herstellung ihrer Stelen und Figuren. Als würden durch die konkrete physische Ausdehnung eines Körpers, verstärkt durch Material und Muster, Gefühle und Ängste regelrecht messbar, wird Stoff zu einer Art zweiten Haut, mit der sich umgehen lässt. Haut als Grenze zur Welt erscheint dichotomisch zugleich als Schutz und Verletzbarkeit.“ (Marianne Harms-Nicolai, Galerie Karsten Greve, 2003)

GUDRUN KAMPL, geb. 1964 in Klagenfurt, lebt in Wien. “Das Gewand erscheint uns im Moment seines Gebrauchs als etwas Individuelles, Eigenes, Persönliches und gilt auch als authentischer Beleg für den Körper, weil er dessen Berührung bezeugt. Die zahlreichen, heiligen Gewänder' zählen zu den verbreitetsten Berührungsreliquien.”

KIM SOOJA, geb. 1957 in Taegu, Korea, lebt in New York. “Die Koreaner haben einen ganz anderen Bezug zu diesen Bettlaken wie auch zu ihren Kleidern als die westlichen Menschen. Sie glauben, dass der Geist der Person, die die Kleider getragen hat, darin lebt. In Korea ist es absolut unüblich, gebrauchte Kleider von jemand anderem zu tragen. Secondhand-Geschäfte sind uns fremd.” (2002)

CLAES OLDENBURG, geb. 1929 in Stockholm, lebt in New York, seit 1976 Zusammenarbeit mit COOSJE VAN BRUGGEN, geb. 1942 in Groningen, Niederlande, lebt in New York. “The main reason for making a soft version of a known hard object may be (I think more and more it is) to dramatize or isolate the condition of softness. And other conditions such as the response to 'gravity' - this condition under which objects appear to exist, and we as objects, as matter, appear to exist.” (1969)

FÜSUN ONUR, geb. 1938 in Istanbul, lebt in Istanbul. “I use textile, tulle representing light textile. I like its transparency, its sort of hiding but half-showing fragility, whirling, twisting, its folding, curling. I think its roots go back to my childhood, the organza- dress I wore at the age of 5. The handkerchiefs with lace, embroidery I was given of festival days.” (2004)

JESSICA STOCKHOLDER, geb. 1959 in Seattle, WA, lebt in New Haven, CT. “I use fabric because it is a kind of skin, like paint, wall paper, sheet-rock, or lawns. I enjoy the enormous variety of imagery that is available on fabric and its plasticity. Unlike paint fabric has structure and a geometry embedded in it. It manages to be at once flat and three dimensional.” (2004)

ROSEMARIE TROCKEL, geb. 1952 in Schwerte, Deutschland, lebt in Köln. “Die Frage etwa interessiert mich, warum früher oft Ausstellungen von Künstlerinnen schlecht waren, warum sie Materialien nehmen aus Heim- und Herdbereich usw. Deshalb das typische und sehr belastende Material: Wolle. Ich will wissen, ob das negative Klischee überwunden werden kann, wenn der handwerkliche Aspekt aus dem ganzen Komplex herausfällt, wenn das Strickmuster vom Computer gesteuert entsteht.” (1988)

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