'Everything you forget cries for help in your dreams.'
Elias Canetti
"Dream and trauma are regarded as opposites that have a lot in common: the psychoanalytical background, the phenomena of the unconscious and suppression and, not least, their power of transcendence. An aesthetics of the traumatic as found in the works of William Kentridge or Cindy Sherman visualises forms of pain, fear and injury, it shows wounds to the essence of being and existential wounding. It depicts inner states of feeling, altered, crazy and uncanny perceptions of reality (Robert Gober), fragmented bodies (Paul McCarthy, Anna Gaskell) and remnant forms (Urs Fischer). It discovers an art that, in the works of Gregory Crewdson, Tim Noble/Sue Webster, visualises the repressed and depraved and so uncovers pain-filled wishes, desires and dreams. Dreams and trauma reveal their imaginary power in the tension between absence and presence; repression and a surfeit of emotion; abstraction (Olafur Eliasson, Christopher Wool) and visual overload (Aurel Schmidt, Ralf Ziervogel)." MUMOK
Today we spent a few hours in the Traum und Trauma (Dream and Trauma) display. It features works from the Dakis Joannou Collection of Athens. I'm far from being an Art buff, and some of the descriptions (with their -ities and -isms and whatnot) are so convoluted it's difficult to understand what's really being talked about. But I can say that something about this collection affects me on a visceral level. I feel more than think about the art. Something resonates, dark parts included. It's beautiful, it's repulsive, it's fascinating. It pulls me in and leaves me feeling just a little bit unsettled, uplifted, brain working furiously in the background wanting to create in the same manner these people do.
Freud would have a field day in that collection, most definitely. ;)
Artists:
Pawel Althamer, Tauba Auerbach, Hisham Bharoocha, Maurizio Cattelan, Paul Chan, Nigel Cooke, Gregory Crewdson, Gerald Davis, Brian DeGraw, Nathalie Djurberg, Marcel Dzama, Olafur Eliasson, Urs Fischer, Naomi Fisher, Saul Fletcher, Barnaby Furnas, Anna Gaskell, Robert Gober, Matt Greene, Oliver Halsman Rosenberg, Adam Helms, Cameron Jamie, Dorota Jurczak, William Kentridge, Jeff Koons, Friedrich Kunath, Matt Leines, Ashley Macomber, Paul McCarthy, Tim Noble/Sue Webster, Chris Ofili, Poka-Yio, Dimitris Protopapas, Georgia Sagri, Aurel Schmidt, Cindy Sherman, Dasha Shishkin, Kiki Smith, Nedko Solakov, Christiana Soulou, Alex Stein, Nari Ward, Christopher Wool, Ralf Ziervogel
Christopher Wool
Steel Curtain, 1986
I'll quote what the blurb had to say. "The curtain is a complex symbol that hides something unfamiliar and hints at an unknown terrain. It marks a threshold, a zone of transition to another space, another reality. It functions as the seam between what can be percieved and what can only be suspected and relates to the dualism of the conscious and the conscious. The negative character of the representation reveals the trauma as something incomprehensible and unfathomable that cannot be integrated into the subject's horizon of experience"
It looks wicked cool too.
Robert Gober
 Untitled (Dollhouse), 1980
Silva Morosa, 2003
Gorgeous, immense painting. "Nigel Cooke's large-scale works look like landscape paintings. Only a closer, more detailed analysis reveals the apocalyptic inferno: human heads with rigid expressions jut out of the earth, lie scattered over the ground like stones, or are - as in Silva Morosa - imprisoned in a wall overgrown with plants. Seen from a distance, this tropical vegetation takes on the form of an enormous skull with a horrible grin that makes shudder [sic]" Urs Fischer
Pawel Althamer
Untitled, 2006
"The three male figures lying on the ground, cuddling up to each other with the upper parts of their bodies and yet spreading radially into the room, make us think of fallen social subjects in various ways. While they try to communicate closeness to and support for each other, they present themselves as caught up in dull helplessness and as hampering each other's freedom of movement."
 Amazing Grace, 1983
"The extensive installation Amazing Grace is an accumulation of over 280 prams tied together with old firehoses. The worn-out everyday objects hint at countless people's paths through life, thereby expressing time and its passage as well as an individual happiness. Prams are not only associated with mothers and babies, but in the cities of the U.S. homeless people sometimes use them for transporting their few belongings"
 He/She, 2003
"He/She is an installation made of metal leftovers which, brightly lit from a certain point, cast shadow images on the wall. Unexpectedly, the abstract forms reveal themselves as concrete: we see the artists urinating - him standing, her cowering."
 Black Narcissus, 2006 "The artist couple Tim Noble and Sue Webster often use refuse, metallic and wooden objects, dead animals, or banknotes for their scultural works. Lit from a particular angle, the sculptural arrangements cast unexpected shadow images on the wall - usually self-portraits of the artists. Likewise in the case of Black Narcissus, a montage of countless black silicon casts of Sue Webster's fingers and Tim Noble's penis in various stages of sexual excitement reveals a Janus head of the two artist's faces in the projected silhouette."
 In case it wasn't clear just what objects were forming those two faces. :>
Aaand so end this post about a lovely day at the MuseumsQuartier. :)
Labels: Art |
