between EXIT & PROJECTIONS - a 2009 vision
Rolf A. Kluenter & Susanne Junker
Showing posts with label Artists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Artists. Show all posts
January 6, 2009
Limbo Grid Installation view
between EXIT & PROJECTIONS - a 2009 vision
Rolf A. Kluenter & Susanne Junker
Rolf A. Kluenter, Limbo Grid, mixed media + film, 2008 A site-specific installation created for stage候台BACK, Shanghai, October 30 – December 7, 2008
Limbo Grid provides an insight into Kluenter’s cosmology and his observation of urbanity as an awe-inspiring reality. These aspects of Kluenter’s aesthetics might bear strong reminiscences of scenes and atmospheres of 19th century Romanticism. In contrast, however, his recourses and references rather relate to the “Darkness” of a mega-urban scenario than to the “Mighty of Nature”.
In his installation, a multi-layered net-like structure metaphorically plays the central role. The net-like structure is made of fragile blackened Nepalese handmade paper. It hangs down from the ceiling and divides the space into two rooms. As a contra-point to the dominant black paper-structure, a film projection is set on the opposite wall. The short film is based on a variety of nightshift scenes which Kluenter filmed during the past years at one of central Shanghai’s many construction sites. The film music is composed of several commonly known sound-fragments that Kluenter has re-arranged and re-mixed to enhance the scenes of the film.
Tiny objects that are attached to the lower and upper ends of the blackened paper grid further alienate the work. A very small staircase made of Lego-toys comes forth from the lower end and reaches to the ground where small plastic toy-puppets stand to welcome the descendants. A welcome banner reads: “Welcome back from Limbo. Welcome to our brave new world”. From the upper end of the paper-grid, joined plastic drinking straws emerge and extend into space as a loop. Attached to the plastic drinking straw structure, black scrolls are hanging down on which a variety of statements are written that relate to the term “heaven”. During the exhibition period until December 7, Kluenter will be adding one statement on “heaven” on each day.
Since the installation and film figuratively evoke a state of non-resolution and uncertainty, the connotation of a “Limbo”, a term that has been frequently used in literature, becomes obvious. Limbo is a place or state of oblivion to which persons or things are regarded as being relegated when cast aside, forgotten, past, or out of date. Spiritually and in scholastic theology, limbo is an extramundane region where certain classes of souls were supposed to await their judgment.
Blackened Nepalese paper has been the primary ground and substance of Rolf A. Kluenter’s work for the past years. Blackness essentially suggests the absence of a source of light and the notion of void. Its nature evokes the limits of the visible. The hand-made structures of the blackened Nepalese net-like paper object show an excessive load of irregularities.
Like an ongoing experiment, Kluenter’s approach is to display his works in series as ever so many declinations of basic emotional positions. Life and art are situated between cultures, crossing borders, intersecting at cross-cultural pathways: process of change, fluctuation and spatial-geographic traceless-ness, interdisciplinary paradoxes, wordless and non-conceptual messages simulating unlimited virtual variety.
December 11, 2008
Geiles Globales Gesicht - Susanne Junker - Soloshow - September 8 - 28 2008 " 個人表演 "
An essentially untranslatable term, “Geiles”, either grand or aroused by desire, has been coined by Susanne Junker for her most recent photographic series. 12 images of the artist transformed after painstaking applications of facial paint confront spectators with a work constituent of anonymity, cultural associations & iconography as well as silent protest. In the traditions of Chinese Opera, female characters were exclusively portrayed by male performers, the masks and painted visage irrefutably linked to dramatic personae, and narrative discourse predictable and unwavering. With “Geiles Globales Gesicht” (Grand Global Masks), a seductive counterpoint is given: the performer is one female, the symbolic reference of the masks sabotaged, rendered “perverse”, and visual reference one of auto-portraiture. For those familiar with Susanne Junker, this versatile artist/conceptual photographer is not adverse to challenging either gender portrayal, sexual iconography or to employ role-reversal as a means of visual subterfuge. The use of the masked figures is a conscious attempt to address specific social constraints and paradoxical elements in the visual vocabulary of the people of the PRC, the voyeurism of the nations’ expatriate audience and community. The faces are silent, the facial details entirely submerged in centuries old practice of multiple layers of grease paint, mouths obscured, and save for one image, reminiscent of the European Harlequin (yet, derived from a traditional character of Chinese Opera), reflect upon the inherent associations of the art form and its transformation. The “Harlequin” poses an interesting jest, as the character itself plays against cultural monogamy and symbol: an image shared by radically different cultural histories and traditions ridicules us with a sad air as part of the exhibition.
In contemplation of the use of the mask not only as a cultural icon or metaphorical device for whatever proposed allegory, we need to recall the significance and conscious/unconscious associations in our collective visual experience. A central vehicle for dramatic anonymity, as well as character portrayal, the mask today symbolizes what aspect of our society? The stage of today, inundated with virtual and artificially manipulable digital sequencing and projections has near abandoned the craft of the mask, yet their appearance is evocative nonetheless.
This work well reflects Barthes associative logic of the photographic moment with that of “death”. Times passage demands the re-analysis of form & & psychological association, history reminds of our changing perceptions of what constitutes cultural symbols & technological advent and innovation now demands we challenge aspects of our cultural heritage. Fascination and voyeurism are doubtlessly aspects of the human condition which have been amplified, and the artist transfixes the stage in mute protest. For Barthes, this suggests that photography creates the conditions for a profound loss of meaning, an absence in which referentiality is removed although we still understand what we see.
In contrast, Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theories on photography explain a moment of perception which exceeds the normal boundaries of the everyday. This excess is at one and the same time an encounter with the self and with history. It moves the activity of viewing from a transparent relationship of meaning and expression to a level in which meaning seems to be there without the presence of subjectivity. It is as if the photograph brings out the unconscious, is also a representation of the unconscious and at the same time denies all of these relations of meaning. Junker has undoubtedly redoubled the examination of these two contrastive theories, the loss of meaning is observed, in a relational sense, yet, by the incorporation of more sublime elements rather than a clearly defined "studium" and "punctum", she delivers a visual experience which is highly evocative, more akin to a Lacanian analysis of the medium.To graft the mask from the dramatic arts and make it a central component of conceptual photography, to transform the characters associated with each specific folkloric character (in this case those immediately recognizable from either Jinju or Kunju Opera) as an extension of an artist's adopted psyche- a precarious venture which Susanne Junker has attempted in multiple previous experiments- is no small task. A new representation of an object already categorical & representational, embodiments of narrative fictions to be performed onstage and now suspended in a silent two-dimensional vortex, specters of themselves cast upon the visage of the artist at work in an indivisible act of auto-portraiture, leads to an annihilation of the former and enlivening to the latter. In her work, the artist has afforded new life, and in doing, contrast socio-cultural parallels with her own personal inclinations to provoke the unthinking mechanisms and latency of our image ridden society. Ours is a visual culture, her attempts reminds us that we need constantly analyze and re-analyze the immediacy of our visual environment, and equally, that this auto-reflex has become a part of our post-industrial, ultra-technological society...we are made dependent on the same devices which we have created towards an actual liberalization from the past and former bastions of cultural and societal "advance", now, defunct. While the sincerity of the artist is undoubtable, her personal situational "flux", (from her former series attempting to transgress the field of vision from her experience as a model to that of photographer, from a past of the fashion industry to that of conceptual or fine art...) has led to a body of work which signals diversity and boldness. The current series, while aesthetically and technically more mature leaves one with a sense of greater coherency than several of the series of experiments by the artist of past years, yet the depth of examination is somewhat lacking. While having consciously decided on 12 faces/masks and there presentation is remarkable, within the sphere of cultural reference & social commentary, there remains an understatement in content & manner. Would it not be in order to cross-reference the function of the mask and its use in photography ? A similar re-examination of those faces of antiquity well known and understood in the Italian traditions of Dell'Arte, the Medieval traditions of the Mime and later comic characters of the popular drama's and repertoires of North American film, television and theatre may have a direct trans-cultural impact for the audiences of Chinese origin? For a similar lack of full comprehension and a similar field of misinterpretation exists in visual translations from the Occidental to Oriental vocabulary. We may anticipate an extenuation of the Geiles Globales Gesicht in new applications of form and content in the near future with an emphasis on the Global. To bridge the representational is perhaps to command or control the representational, and while the Geiles Globales Gesicht manifests as a travesty of the transformations behind a medium from one iconographic reference (whether contemporary or traditional) and to another symbolism a minor note of detraction exists in her derisive mirror of the sublime and the crass. It is one where the most neglected audience is denied a role of similar contrastive analysis as the artist, while in a full enthusiasm and passion towards the act of auto-portraiture and individual transformations of the representative icon, has overlooked the importance of the signifier of the "Other" beyond the Euro-Centric errors of both the past and present, and has forgotten the importance Sino-Centric errors of the interpretation of cultural symbols in balance. Nonetheless, a stark commentary is inherent in the message itself & as an emergent series, proves to be confrontational and engaging.
R A Suri
In contemplation of the use of the mask not only as a cultural icon or metaphorical device for whatever proposed allegory, we need to recall the significance and conscious/unconscious associations in our collective visual experience. A central vehicle for dramatic anonymity, as well as character portrayal, the mask today symbolizes what aspect of our society? The stage of today, inundated with virtual and artificially manipulable digital sequencing and projections has near abandoned the craft of the mask, yet their appearance is evocative nonetheless.
This work well reflects Barthes associative logic of the photographic moment with that of “death”. Times passage demands the re-analysis of form & & psychological association, history reminds of our changing perceptions of what constitutes cultural symbols & technological advent and innovation now demands we challenge aspects of our cultural heritage. Fascination and voyeurism are doubtlessly aspects of the human condition which have been amplified, and the artist transfixes the stage in mute protest. For Barthes, this suggests that photography creates the conditions for a profound loss of meaning, an absence in which referentiality is removed although we still understand what we see.
In contrast, Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theories on photography explain a moment of perception which exceeds the normal boundaries of the everyday. This excess is at one and the same time an encounter with the self and with history. It moves the activity of viewing from a transparent relationship of meaning and expression to a level in which meaning seems to be there without the presence of subjectivity. It is as if the photograph brings out the unconscious, is also a representation of the unconscious and at the same time denies all of these relations of meaning. Junker has undoubtedly redoubled the examination of these two contrastive theories, the loss of meaning is observed, in a relational sense, yet, by the incorporation of more sublime elements rather than a clearly defined "studium" and "punctum", she delivers a visual experience which is highly evocative, more akin to a Lacanian analysis of the medium.To graft the mask from the dramatic arts and make it a central component of conceptual photography, to transform the characters associated with each specific folkloric character (in this case those immediately recognizable from either Jinju or Kunju Opera) as an extension of an artist's adopted psyche- a precarious venture which Susanne Junker has attempted in multiple previous experiments- is no small task. A new representation of an object already categorical & representational, embodiments of narrative fictions to be performed onstage and now suspended in a silent two-dimensional vortex, specters of themselves cast upon the visage of the artist at work in an indivisible act of auto-portraiture, leads to an annihilation of the former and enlivening to the latter. In her work, the artist has afforded new life, and in doing, contrast socio-cultural parallels with her own personal inclinations to provoke the unthinking mechanisms and latency of our image ridden society. Ours is a visual culture, her attempts reminds us that we need constantly analyze and re-analyze the immediacy of our visual environment, and equally, that this auto-reflex has become a part of our post-industrial, ultra-technological society...we are made dependent on the same devices which we have created towards an actual liberalization from the past and former bastions of cultural and societal "advance", now, defunct. While the sincerity of the artist is undoubtable, her personal situational "flux", (from her former series attempting to transgress the field of vision from her experience as a model to that of photographer, from a past of the fashion industry to that of conceptual or fine art...) has led to a body of work which signals diversity and boldness. The current series, while aesthetically and technically more mature leaves one with a sense of greater coherency than several of the series of experiments by the artist of past years, yet the depth of examination is somewhat lacking. While having consciously decided on 12 faces/masks and there presentation is remarkable, within the sphere of cultural reference & social commentary, there remains an understatement in content & manner. Would it not be in order to cross-reference the function of the mask and its use in photography ? A similar re-examination of those faces of antiquity well known and understood in the Italian traditions of Dell'Arte, the Medieval traditions of the Mime and later comic characters of the popular drama's and repertoires of North American film, television and theatre may have a direct trans-cultural impact for the audiences of Chinese origin? For a similar lack of full comprehension and a similar field of misinterpretation exists in visual translations from the Occidental to Oriental vocabulary. We may anticipate an extenuation of the Geiles Globales Gesicht in new applications of form and content in the near future with an emphasis on the Global. To bridge the representational is perhaps to command or control the representational, and while the Geiles Globales Gesicht manifests as a travesty of the transformations behind a medium from one iconographic reference (whether contemporary or traditional) and to another symbolism a minor note of detraction exists in her derisive mirror of the sublime and the crass. It is one where the most neglected audience is denied a role of similar contrastive analysis as the artist, while in a full enthusiasm and passion towards the act of auto-portraiture and individual transformations of the representative icon, has overlooked the importance of the signifier of the "Other" beyond the Euro-Centric errors of both the past and present, and has forgotten the importance Sino-Centric errors of the interpretation of cultural symbols in balance. Nonetheless, a stark commentary is inherent in the message itself & as an emergent series, proves to be confrontational and engaging.
R A Suri
After a long summer break we got ready for the Shanghai "art month" September that featured 2 art fairs, the Shanghai Biennale and about 80 gallery openings in one week. Jam! I hung my newest series "Geiles Globales Gesicht". Take a look on the piece I done, you can find it here.
等到很長的暑假我們準備趕上上海 “藝術月” 9月兩個藝術務，Shanghai Biennale 還有80多哥艺术家的开幕式在同一周. Jam! 我吧我的最新的个作品瓜 " Geiles Globales Gesicht". 情到这里看 GoSee
Andy Guhl live at stage候台BACK #0 －淄博
Check out Andy Guhl Live performance on 'youtube' below.
Some photos from stage後台BACK gallery..
Sound Artist Andy Guhl “ 聲藝術家 ”
Andy Guhl (*1952, St. Gallen, Switzerland) is a pioneer sound artist and one of the fathers of European electronic experimental music. As part of the music formation Voice Crack and Poire_Z, he has strongly influenced multiple generations of musicians and artists of the international underground and noise movements. With over 30 released albums as well as performances and exhibitions in over 20 countries, Andy Guhl continues his prolific artistic production despite a widely publicized split from partner Norbert Möslang in 2002. Andy Guhl started his career in 1972 in improvisational free jazz together with Norbert Möslang. In 1983 they started cracking daily electronics and developed it to the cracked everyday electronics. By manipulating these objects to produce sounds, they broke down the traditional barrier between daily items and musical instruments and their acoustic perception. In the1990s the duo expanded their reach into visual representation of acoustic phenomena with several installations, including the "Sound Shifting" installation they presented at the Venice Biennial 2001 upon invitation of the Swiss Art Council. Since 2002 Andy Guhl has branched out on his own with ever more innovative installations using audio-visual feedback in analogue electronic systems which he calls “The Instrument”, the expanded cracked everyday electronics. "For me physics is a musical building block," says Andy Guhl, "to allow you to also see what you're hearing."安迪·盖尔（Andy Guhl），先锋声音艺术家，1952年出生于瑞士的圣加仑，是欧洲电子实验音乐的发起者之一。作为瑞士传奇噪音乐队Voice Crack 和Poire_Z乐队的成员，他深刻地影响了一代代致力于国际地下/噪音音乐运动的音乐家和艺术家。安迪·盖尔至今发行了30余张专辑，曾在20多个国家进行演出和展览。尽管与前乐队合作者诺伯特·莫斯朗（Norbert Möslang）于2002年公开分道扬镳，他至今仍活跃在其丰富而多产的艺术创作中。 安迪·盖尔的艺术生涯始于1972年，当时主要是与诺伯特·莫斯朗一起即兴创作自由爵士乐。1983年两人开始尝试改造日常电器，最后把它们发展成今天演奏使用的电子设备，即“经改装的日常电器-乐器”，这种做法打破了传统意义上日常电器和乐器以及声音概念之间的鸿沟。20世纪90年代二人组合采取了一些新装置，将声音现象的表达方式扩展到视觉领域，其中包括应瑞士艺术委员会之邀出席2001年威尼斯双年展时展出的“声音转换”装置。2002年，安迪·盖尔又将视听结合的反馈噪音应用到他称之为“乐器”的类电子系统装置上（此装置是广义上“经改装日常电器-乐器”的一种）。这项具有超越性的创新之举为此后他的艺术创作开创了更广阔的视野和发展空间。“我认为物理学是音乐的基石，”安迪·盖尔说，“它能让你在听的同时看到你所听的东西。”
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