|
ANNE SCHNEIDER
Exhibition view "anthropomorphic and dissimilar", 2011
Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna
ANNE
SCHNEIDER
anthropomorphic and
dissimilar
June 29
- September 10, 2011
The gallery will open upon request in
August
A
preoccupation with physical and mental spaces, their
conditions and histories, and their way of relating to the
individual plays a central role in Anne
Schneider's work. The husks, the layers that surround
us, that are a protective shield serve her as a point of
departure. She stacks wool blankets with circular
imperfections, has wires dangle from the ceiling and the
floor, architectural models made of wax hang in the room on
threads, recalling body cavities, habitats that she keeps
watch over, exploring their social structure. Her focus is
always the individual and the surrounding architecture and
space. Homing in on structural analogies, she creates a
loosely knit fabric of formal affinities and related
experiences.
In
her most recent works Anne Schneider deliberately refers to
the usual steel-reinforced concrete construction, sheathing
iron rods in concrete, while at the same time giving the
construction material the appearance of a soft textile and
thus lending it an unusual familiarity. Thanks to the artist's
handling of this cold and hard material it takes on tactile
qualities: human traces, folds, curvatures and scars. Based on
this initial sheathing, she had developed works that continue
in diverse ways this interplay of material and effect,
construction and furnishing, architecture and individual, past
and present.
The
cushion, the pillow, the stool are sculptural forms that
always relate to the individual regardless of the way they are
made, their material and their origin. They represent the
everyday man-object-relationship, symbolizing its corporeal
limit along which the individual establishes contact with the
outside world. Yet Anne Schneider is not concerned with actual
body imprints in the form of hollows or protrusions in the
concrete casts. These are the deposits of time, the traces of
use, the collective associations, the inscriptions of the
unconscious, the anthropological condensation in these
functional objects, the memory of objects that capture her
interest.
Some
of Anne Schneider's objects present familiar forms, yet they
are (only) materializations of a void. Like Bruce Nauman who
once made a cast of the empty space below his chair to make it
visible and 'tangible', Anne Schneider also materializes what
is seemingly invisible as symptoms. Each cast, each impression
is testimony of a touch, while withholding us the contact with
the object that lent its form. It is thus almost automatically
grasped as separation, loss or absence. Each absence points to
traces of a former presence and thus refers to the temporal
dimension of the past and immediate present.
Like
an archaeologist who is used to reading sediments and working
through layers, the artist presents her works in a vertical
dimension. There are metal rods emerging from the concrete
casts reaching to the ceiling, formations resembling sacks
that are folded along a pipe extending downwards. Metal poles
connected with only a light-blue aluminium drawing lean
against the wall. Strings and bands hang from the ceiling and
stretch biomorphic objects to become longer. A door divides
the space vertically and along with a metal ladder indicates
the direction in which the works should be read. The gaze
wanders from top to bottom. The works appear to have sunken to
the ground, remaining connected to the surface, to the present
by means of mysterious antennae. Submersed in time they seem
to be engaged in an imaginary dialogue. The prostheses that
appear to come from their inside also direct attention to
their “internal life”. A further cavity with sediments,
deposits, traces of a collective unconscious?
The
objects remain suspended. The impression as a sign of
recognition or even a sign of identity is subverted. For Anne
Schneider a decisive factor is the artist becoming one with
his/her material, the contact and the way the body relates to
it. In his book “Similarity and Touch” Georges Didi-Huberman
writes the following, quoting Gilbert Simondon: one would have
to “be able to get at the form together with clay, becoming
both form and clay. To be able to feel and experience their
interaction, to be able to conceive of the emergence of form.”
Anne Schneider's forms can only be grasped by re-experiencing
this contact.
(Roman Grabner, Vienna/Graz, 2011)
Anne
Schneider was born in Enns (Austria) in 1965, she lives and
works in Vienna. From 1992-1996 masterstudent with
Michelangelo Pistoletto at the Academy of Fine Arts
Vienna.
Selected exhibitions:
2011 WAX, KUNSTEN Museum of
Modern Art Aalborg, Denmark; WAX. Sensation in Contemporary
Sculpture, Kunstforeningen GL STRAND, Copenhagen, Denmark;
Puppen - Projektionsfiguren in der Kunst, Museum Villa Rot,
Germany; Geburt der Venus, vitrine at the find spot of Venus
of Willendorf; 2010 Eroi Eroine. Iconologia e simulacro,
Castello di Rivalta, Turin, Italy; 2008 Nichts ohne den
Körper, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Austria; In Deiner Gegenwart,
Dortmunder Kunstverein, Germany; 2007 Austrian Cultural Forum,
Tokyo; 2006 ...und Wachs, Christine König Galerie, Vienna;
2004 side by side, Christine König Galerie, Vienna; 2003 How
big is the world?, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan;
Mimosen, Rosen, Herbstzeitlosen: Künstlerinnen von 1945 bis
zur Gegenwart, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria; 2001 ...walking to
the seat with the clearest view..., Christine König Galerie,
Vienna; Art/Music, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney;
Shopping, Generali Foundation, Vienna; 2000 Der
anagrammatische Körper, ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany.
CHRISTINE KÖNIG GALERIE
Schleifmuehlgasse 1A
A-1040
Vienna
Austria
T: 43 1
585 74 74
|
