Galerie Chantal Crousel is pleased to host Heimo Zobernig's fifth solo exhibition, which brings together his historic works from the 1980s for the first time in Europe. The graphic and sculptural works of the Viennese artist cover the major lines woven through his artwork over the past forty years. Some of the works on paper show a hitherto unseen side to his work, kept until now in the privacy of his studio.
Heimo Zobernig, key figure within the Austrian art scene, is one of the most important artists of his generation. In the 1980s, he made a name for himself with his protean art, using multiple media such as video, performance, painting, sculpture, installation, architecture and design. Challenging the major artistic trends of the 20th century, such as constructivism, geometric abstraction or even minimalism, his art questioned the very system of art, its modus operandi and its ideological framework.
On view for the first time, the exhibition will present works in India ink, felt-tip pen and gouache on paper taken from the visual diary the artist kept in the 1980s. Figurative recordings of his day-to-day impressions, the drawings present the human form, usually absent from his graphic work, but introduced in his videos, performances and sculptures (in which he stages his own body).
A series of small abstract paintings anticipate the artist's future pictorial work, in particular his borrowing from modernism of a 'formal neutralism' stripped of all symbolism or narrative content. Alongside these works are miniature models made of cardboard, upon which the artist applied oil paint. Midway between painting and sculpture, they are precursors of the architectural interventions and installations he developed from the 1990s on. Heimo Zobernig extends the monochrome of paintings to the world of objects (furniture, pedestals, etc.) and architecture (walls, floors, etc.).
Scenographic objects punctuate both gallery spaces: a table painted black, a screen painted white, man-sized cubical columns of cardboard. A black synthetic resin varnish, applied to the entire surface of the latter, covers personal pictures of the artist or acts as a framework for white goose feathers. These stage props, recurring in his work, play with the codes of minimalism and send out a destabilising reinterpretation of art history which under the appearance of a certain form of understatedness, is not without lightness.
Curated by art critic Stéphanie Moisdon.
Press release courtesy Galerie Chantal Crousel.
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