Gerwald Rockenschaub’s early works can be attributed to ‘neo-geo’ (‘new geometry’) painting, an art genre emerging in the 1980s that derives abstract form-finding from today’s environment and society, while referring to the abstract-geometric styles of 20th century art. Although Gerwald Rockenschaub has gradually turned away from the disci- pline of painting, his later installations and sculptures are based on similar ideas. In this context, his room installations are to be understood as minimalist objects on the one hand; on the other hand, they point to the exhibition conditions of contemporary art within the so-called ‘white cube’.
Read MoreIn the late eighties, Gerwald Rockenschaub introduced a radical paradigm shift by drafting his objects on the computer and having them produced by specialized firms. With its ten- dency towards industrial design development procedures, the artist’s working method re- veals a fundamentally interdisciplinary character. This is also expressed by his interest in electronic music, for instance. Working as a sculptor, graphic artist, and disc jockey, he thus left his mark on the aesthetics of the nineties – combining pop music with minimal, conceptual and contextual art.
Gerwald Rockenschaub’s work incorporates space as an additional parameter: By placing his objects inside a room, he creates walkable sculptures. When the artist was featured in the Austrian pavilion of the 1993 Venice Biennale, he set up scaffolds on which the visitors could move through the room and thereby gain new perspectives.
Text courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber.
