GABRIELE SENN GALERIE curated by Georg Elben
„Performance – The Body as a Continuum in Art“

Georg Elben Studied art history, political science and German studies in Bonn, Milan and Karlsruhe. Established of a collection of German art for KfW Bankengruppe (known as Deutsche Ausgleichsbank before 2003). 2003 - 2011: director of Videonale, the International video art festival, at the Kunstmuseum Bonn. 2006 – 2010: curator of the video series "Edition Bewegte Bilder" in the Rheingold Collection; exhibitions with David Zink Yi, Corinna Schnitt, Jeanne Faust, Erik van Lieshout and Jonathan Horowitz in Cologne’s Museum Ludwig. Since 2011: director of the Sculpture Museum Glaskasten Marl. Exhibitions with Janet Biggs, Diango Hernández, Mischa Kuball and Günther Uecker amongst others. Thematic exhibitions on video and sound art, in the context of the current video art scene in China as part of China 8 / nine museums in the Ruhr area. Curator of THE HOT WIRE - a cooperation between Skulptur Projekte Münster (Sculpture Projects Münster) and the Sculpture Museum Glaskasten Marl.

The Viennese actionists’ radical experiments scared the public at the time of their creation. It is for that very reason though, that they can’t be underestimated in their long-term impact and presence. They continue to be effective today as reference points. This is especially the case in Vienna, where people still have memories of particular activities and images from that period, but also because those directly involved then are still active today. This is legacy upon which the exhibition wants to base itself on. However, it does not show videos and photographs as documentary evidence of a certain activity, but rather showcases them as art. The videos and photographs are then shown as associatively related to one another in the exhibition space. The exhibition draws attention to media experiments and artistic actions that develop an independent aesthetic by examining art-historical references. But while artists of the past pushed their bodies to its limits and sometimes experienced or inflicted self-harm, and whilst they worked with the aesthetics of breaking taboos, younger artists seem to work with more lightness and ease. Their performances are no longer primarily an attack bourgeois conventions.

Gabriele Senn Gallery’s programme includes a wide range of artists who have created performative photographs. An example would be the obese cowboy, a colt in his hand, as he sits in a plain kitchen (Kathi Hofer). The piece is reminiscent of a movie-still that could momentarily continue with an unexpected plot. Or a young woman’s soapy hands, details of her face (Marina Sula), precisely composed and balanced in their objectivity. The gestures are frozen in the image and simultaneously imply the possibilities of story development that could arise out of the viewer’s imagination.

 

The videos selected for the exhibition are by artists who chose to stage their performance for the camera, as opposed to an audience. Their pieces were created for viewing in an exhibition space. In these video performances, the artist usually performs alone in front of the camera. There is no audience and technical efforts are kept to a minimum. These are pieces that depict media authenticity, exhibitionistic loneliness and ironic intimacy. The feeling of transience connects with the experience of timelessness. This artistic attitude is historically closely linked to the early experimental videos of artists such as Bruce Nauman, Marina Abramovic and Sanja Ivekovic. Their work has acted as an important contribution to the development of an aesthetic that addresses the phenomenological experiences of the human body in space and time.

 

Performances for the camera are thus increasingly the cinematic documentation of a performative act. They are theatrical or musical experiments that artists perform with just themselves, their bodies, a few props or other persons. The camera seems to serve as a mirror. In particular, the artist’s physical self-reference and the contemplation about his or her own identity contained therein seem to be what constantly rejuvenates the genre. Authenticity and self-presentation intertwine in a complex process of self-questioning.