> Walter Steinacher: Yugostalgia
> Frederick Kiesler Exhibition at Jason McCoy Gallery
> Franz West at Central Park
> Andrea van der Straeten at CCS Bard
- Mnozil Brass © Julia Wesely
Mnozil Brass Goes USA
First US Tour of the Austrian Septet
by Anna Gruessinger
Mnozil Brass is definitely not your average brass band. All seven musicians are masters of their instruments. Their programs meld waltz and pop, groovy swing and Alpine tootling. They happen to be genuine entertainers with a wry sense of humor as well. Their performances are colorful, almost outlandish, but a true pleasure to experience.
The band was founded in 1992 by several regulars of musicians’ gatherings at Josef Mnozil’s tavern in Vienna. The band played at weddings and birthday parties, funerals and fairs for some years before they started to perform in theaters and concert venues. The lineup includes Wilfried Brandstötter (tuba), Gerhard Füssl (trombone), Thomas Gansch (trumpet), Zoltan Kiss (trombone), Leonhard Paul (bass trumpet), Roman Rindberger (trumpet), and Robert Rother (trumpet, recorder). They give about 120 concerts each year, delighting audiences from Austria to Australia.
Their first US tour is scheduled for March 2010 and includes concerts in Washington, Plaistow, Powell, Dayton, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Mnozil Brass will play at Joe’s Pub in New York on March 11, 2010.
They will present their program Magic Moments. The audience is to expect two hours of a jolly good show. Finely chiseled arrangements and charming original compositions show the wide spectrum of the splendid tone colors and timbres of their instruments. Mnozil Brass will kiss awake some compositions that have fallen into oblivion; the band will make the audience see these works in a new light.
Mnozil Brass is musical cabaret at its best. This ensemble is full of energy, fun, irony, and sometimes even anarchic spontaneity, and their performances have plenty of surprises in store. Mnozil Brass is sure to win over audiences with their wit and virtuosity on their US tour.
A Road to Yugostalgia – An Interview with Walter Steinacher
IVAN TALIJANCIC: I’d like to start by saying how excited I am to have the opportunity to present your work for the first time in New York. For the New York audiences who don’t know you and your work: who is Walter Steinacher?
WALTER STEINACHER: Well, I was born 36 years ago in a small town in Central Europe. The town is well known for a guy named Wolfgang Amadeus. I shared a similar fate: I was a refugee. But now I live in Koper, Slovenia, by the Adriatic Sea. I’m a freelance artist, and my main focus is on a critical approach to cultural production, mostly in the media of painting, performance, and installation. I collaborate with other artists on all kinds of art projects. I'm making a fairly good living from it. Struggling a bit, but it’s OK. I guess you could call me a young artist from Central Europe.
IT: You mentioned that you had been in Slovenia for a long time. Can you talk about how you ended up there?
WS: After finishing my university studies, I returned to my hometown [Salzburg, Austria] and was really eager to bring back new ideas. I had been doing a lot of theoretical work on problematic cultural movements in our society. So I came back full of excitement, but I crashed into a huge brick wall. I decided to regroup and arrange a small atelier – a local, young underground culture scene. I was completely neglected by the local contemporary art mafia, but the young generation recognized my idea for what it was: an effort to communicate collaboratively; to have an open stage project; to have a club running under the radar. This went really well, but then things changed in my life and I felt I had to find international contacts. So I went on a huge trip through the former Yugoslav states: Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia. I tried to find people to collaborate with and I landed in Metelkova [in Ljubljana, Slovenia], a small independent cultural center that is actually rather large considering the size of the city. They offered me a year-long residency with a studio where I was able to produce work. I felt well received, and ended up making and exhibiting the work I’ll be showing in New York.
IT: Can you talk about what happened when you arrived to Slovenia – experiences and observations that prompted you to create the series of paintings you’ll be showing here?
WS: Travelling through the former Yugoslav countries, especially Bosnia, was both a heartbreaking and heartwarming experience. People are really amazing there. These countries’ history is the biggest tragedy I’ve come across so far. You see it on TV, but in person you have a chance to meet and talk to people there. Also, in Croatia, which is a much more sophisticated and stable country, as well as in Slovenia, I ran into a phenomenon that really puzzled me. Many years ago, in my hometown, I had a friend, a taxi driver, who had a portrait of the former Yugoslav president, Josip Broz Tito, hanging in his apartment. I was actually a bit shocked at the time – I started noticing that various people from all generations in these countries were surrounded with images of this ambiguous personality. Considering that this was a regime that suppressed free opinion, I was puzzled that now that these countries had found freedom and democracy, they seemed to have a longing for something long gone and for a dictatorship. So I began wondering… Why Tito?
IT: And what did you discover when you moved to Slovenia? Since you immigrated, you had an outsider’s perspective of Slovenian culture. This must have provided an opportunity to observe cultural phenomena that people who live there may not be aware of. It certainly appears that your work comments on specific observations.
WS: What I observed with people displaying these images was an emotional attachment to the image, the idea of Tito… of Yugoslavia. It’s a phenomenon that goes through all generations. The old partisans were willing to lose their lives for that idea. For the young generations, it’s a part of pop culture, but still very much a “political issue.” But still, in a way their approach is very ironic, very pop, very easy. For me, it all came together during my residency. All generations were present; there were six nightclubs in Metelkova with paintings and photos in each of them – Tito was omnipresent. The groups are managed independently, and I wondered: why do all these people relate to this icon? How I could work this?
My situation in Slovenia was funny: I was a foreigner in a country that many immigrants in my homeland came from. Now I was the immigrant in their country, which gave the issue an ironic touch that was worth commenting on. Three years ago, I retreated into my studio, took all the images I had gathered, books and photos borrowed from another collector, a well-known Slovenian artist. Surrounded by images of Tito, I tried to imagine what it would feel like to be someone my age but from Slovenia, aware of everything my parents’ generation would have gone through, and then reflect on it. That’s when I came across this huge tension. When the state of Yugoslavia was created, it was of course a system of educating people by mass media, and now the same structure was creating a popular consumer culture. So I tried to refer to the old situation by means of the new situation – I took images of advertisements from the fashion company H&M, images from popular culture, and began experimenting with Tito’s face, trying to see how far you could go before you couldn't recognize that face. I collaged faces with other images, gauging my emotional reactions and showing these images to friends and curators. It was a test: trying to see where there was a strong emotional reaction, ranging from puzzled, annoyed, and amused to distracted. Then I worked further on these images and created the series.
IT: Was the relationship between people from your generation and the images of Tito you found everywhere in Slovenia as ironic as you had found it?
WS: I found a range of relationships. There were some very serious people who would address each other as “comrade” without meaning it as a joke. Then I encountered much more pleasure-seeking, artist types for whom the images were more colorful, strange – the weirder the better. There was a huge range of reactions that different generations had to Tito’s image.
IT: Your images also clearly reference classical paintings. Can you talk about that element of your work?
WS: In the Balkan macho culture, there was a certain subtle, omnipresent homophobia that would create tension when a female nude was superimposed on this very serious father figure. The intent was not only to provoke, but to explore this subconscious emotional attachment to the person that the people there are not aware of – it was suppressed and they had some pressure to deal with living under Tito. I was talking to a Croatian woman who said that Serbs had good positions at that time, and that as a Croatian she couldn’t get a job so she had to go to Germany. I also know historical facts about gulags – after the Second World War there were some tragic things happening, with lots of political prisoners and death penalties, so I guess people there have an ambiguous relationship towards this figure. I tried to express that, especially with the use of a motherly figure: a woman who is not a sexy young girl but has a mother’s body. Her body has a certain uncanny power – we feel attached but also a bit scared of it. In general, it’s a test: I will show the whole range in New York, so people can decide for themselves how successful I was at addressing those relationships.
I’d like to mention one thing that has recently influenced me. In Bosnia, there is a huge movement of Tito clubs, and these happen to be the only entities in Bosnia that deliberately try to reach across ethnic borders. Presidents of each club are of a different ethnicity: Bosnians have a Serb, and Serbs have a Bosnian at the helm. I found this touching… a positive twist on Tito’s ability to reach across borders.
Walter Steinacher’s exhibition YUGOSTALGIA, curated by Ivan Talijancic, will be presented at HERE Arts Center from March 3 through May 1, 2010, in collaboration the Austrian Cultural Forum and WaxFactory, as part of Performing Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe. www.performingrevolution.org
- Portrait of Frederick Kiesler with Endless House Model 1959
Jason McCoy Gallery presents FREDERICK KIESLER: OFF THE WALL. Focusing on the artist's vision of space, the exhibition will be comprised of three Endless House sculptures, several Galaxy paintings, three Grotto for Meditation models, as well as Kiesler’s master drawing of Marcel Duchamp.
THE ENDLESS HOUSE
Kiesler’s vision of a biomorphic, freely flowing, continuous, human-centered living space, which he called the Endless House, dates back to 1922. It was to synthesize painting, sculpture, architecture, and the environment in order to establish a space, which was without a sense of boundaries. Kiesler continued to develop this theme in his architectural designs and sculptures until the end of his life. Describing his idea of the house, he stated that it was to be "endless like the human body—there is no beginning and no end."
THE GALAXIES
In the 1950s and 1960s, Kiesler worked on a series of paintings, which translated his vision of space into multi-paneled installations that protruded from the wall. Synthesizing painting, sculpture and drawing, the Galaxies are presented as grouped units. To Kiesler, the space between the different paintings was a reflection of the “inner necessity” of the work as a whole, explaining that it was the same as what “breathing is to our body reality.” If viewed from the side, the Galaxies assume a sculptural quality. In 1954, Kiesler wrote: “the traditional division of the plastic arts, sculpture, and architecture, is transmuted and overcome and their fluid unification is now contained within rather than combined from without.”
THE GROTTO FOR MEDITATION
The Grotto for Meditation was commissioned by Mrs. Jane Blaffer Owen in 1963 for New Harmony, Indiana. Though the structure was never built, drawings and models remain. As a center for meditation, the Grotto was to embody Kiesler’s vision of a biormorphic, endless space, in which the human mind would be uninhibited. In addition, the designs reveal a highly developed symbolism: the space is depicted as a shell, alluding to the feminine body as well as to the Christian fish-motif. Kiesler envisioned the Grotto as a center of calm, surrounding it with water that would flow from within.
Frederick Kiesler was born in 1890 in Tschernovitz, formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which today belongs to the Ukraine. He studied at the Technische Hochschule (1908-09) and at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (1910-1912) in Vienna. In the following years, he was heavily engaged in theatre, in both Vienna and Berlin, designing stages and choreographing performances. He became a member of the De Stijl group in 1923 and in the following year, he arranged the world premiere of the 16-minute film Ballet mécanique directed by Dudley Murphy and Fernand Léger, with Man Ray, in Vienna. Kiesler moved to New York City in 1926, where he remained until his death in 1965. He collaborated here with the Surrealists, including Marcel Duchamp. Today his works on paper and documents are in the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Foundation in Vienna. In 1989, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, hosted a Kiesler retrospective and in 1996, the Centre Georges Pompidou exhibited “Frederick Kiesler: artiste-architecte."
The exhibition is on view from March 11 to May 1, 2010 at Jason McCoy Gallery at 41 E 57th Street, NYC 10022.
www.jasonmccoyinc.com
Franz West's The Ego and the Id at Central Park
The Ego and the Id, Franz West’s largest aluminum sculpture so far is exhibited by the Public Art Fund at Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park until March 2010.
Installed in July 2009, the piece, soaring 20 feet high, consists of two similar but distinct, brightly colored, looping abstract forms, one bubble gum pink and the other alternating blocks of blue, green, orange, and yellow. Each of the forms curve up at the bottom creating stools that invite passersby to stop, take a seat, and directly engage with the artwork. The sculpture is only truly complete once the viewer interacts with the work. The Ego and the Id is consistent with the artist's overarching desire to produce sociable environments for viewing art using his signature combination of whimsy and monumentality.
Franz West, born 1947, began his career in mid-1960s Vienna during the Viennese Actionism. His earliest sculptures, performances, and collages were a reaction to this movement, in which artists engaged in displays of radical public behavior intended to shake up art-world passivity. In the early 1970s, West began making a series of small, portable sculptures called "Adaptives" ("Paßstücke"). The Ego and the Id is in many ways an oversized version of an "Adaptive." The sculpture also directly relates to the artist's furniture installations, which transform galleries, museums, and public spaces into lounge-like environments. West has described the correlation between his plaster objects and furniture installations as a way to put dreams on earth; "The Adaptives would be the dream and the chairs and tables would be the Earth."
For further details, please click here.
Not Again, “Making History” Reimagined
Andrea van der Straeten at CCS Bard
Curated by Sarah Demeuse
April 12 - May 23, 2010
April 11, 2009 | 1PM - 4PM Exhibition Opening
The beginning: 18 installation shots, a press release, a gallery leaflet. These remainders of “Making History,” a 1999 CCS thesis exhibition, are the backbone of Andrea van der Straeten’s unusual inquiry into a past show’s propositions. Her 2010 tweaked reinterpretation emerges out of conversations and collaborative research with the curator, eager to know and use what came before. “Not Again” takes place in the same gallery space but appears as an echo and functions as cabinet of interpretations.
Immersing themselves in the aural and textual situation, visitors will meander in between past and present exhibitions. “Not Again” suggests repetition, but refuses exact reproduction. Instead, it heightens ephemerality and explores the differences in subjective memory, interpretation and observation.
Andrea van der Straeten’s encounter with the archived documents and her ensuing readings brought about new works on paper, site-specific wall drawings, as well as sculptural interventions. “Not Again” riffs off the spatial distribution in the original exhibition. Van der Straeten also associates the show’s historical references, the Kent State Ohio shootings and social upheavals of the late 1960s, with literary texts from other historical periods. As a whole, her work interrupts linear patterns of history making and focuses on recurring idioms in political rhetoric.
Working from Vienna, Andrea van der Straeten’s distance from the original exhibition is both of a temporal and spatial kind. Her work at Bard continues her ongoing research into informal an uncertain forms of communication. In “Not Again,” she combines her longstanding interest in literature and communication science into a temporary gallery installation.
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson
NY 12504-5000
The museum is free and open to the public Wed-Sun 1-5pm. The exhibition closes on May 23rd.
www.bard.edu/ccs
Holocaust Memorial Service
Lukas Chatzioannidis at the American Jewish Committee
In Austria, young men have to either pass 6 months with the military or spend 9 months in national service, working in civil and community projects. As an alternative, it is also possible to spend a year abroad. The association Austrian Service Abroad cooperates with different organizations worldwide, enabling young men to work in the fields of Holocaust Memorial Serive, Social Service, and Peace Service.
Lukas Chatzioannidis (b. 1989) recently began his Holocaust Memorial Service in New York City. He will be working with the American Jewish Committee for a year. He’s involved with its so-called ACCESS program that conducts educational events for the younger generation of the AJC members, for example trips to Germany and Israel. Lukas is strongly involved in helping organize these events. His other tasks include research for the AJC Annual Meeting in Washington and compiling an brochure for an upcoming exhibition.
While researching the family history, Lukas’ mother found out that parts of the family had been Jewish. Most of them died during World War II in concentration camps. Besides working at the AJC and experiencing life in NYC, Lukas might also try to find some remote family members that allegedly live in the USA.
Having been fascinated with New York City for quite some years now, Lukas is grateful to be able to pass his Holocaust Memorial Service here. Being part of the Austrian Service Abroad program required quite a lot of preparation. Lukas spent almost two years researching about Jewish history and the Holocaust in Austria. Before leaving for NYC, he had to take preparation classes with other participants of the program, who are now spread all over the globe.
As of now, Lukas is still settling in and getting used to life in NYC, and getting started with doing further research on his family roots.
Download Lukas' report (in German) here.
Further information on Austrian Service Abroad: www.auslandsdienst.at
