Hans Schabus. Lower East Side

02.03.2014 - 26.04.2014

Simon Preston Gallery, New York / United States

Hans Schabus has long remained interested in principles of order in architecture and society and persistently seeks to undermine and question them. Disrupting, re-configuring and re-erecting space is essential to his artistic practice. Site-specific installations frequently subvert exhibition space, notably The Last Land (2005) at the Venice Biennale, with its crystalline structure atop the Austrian Pavilion. Revised spatial thinking is also evident through his symbolic use of stairs, tunnels and corridors as conduits that lead back and forth to the vital source of his ideas, the artist’s studio....

His most recent series of four works, collectively titled Lower East Side (2013-14), is an existential investigation of site and context, relating to both the gallery’s private and public histories. Originating from the act of slicing and removing the gallery’s storefront to place in front of the gallery’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach last year, the series developed from the necessity to then build a makeshift temporary plywood façade at the gallery on the Lower East Side. Prompted by the neighboring manufacturers, Schabus devised a 1:1 scale drawing of the façade in his studio in Vienna with the purpose of having a final replacement storefront installed at the gallery. Each freestanding sculpture is shown together with a photograph that records the original action and its subsequent echo. Lower East Side mimics the multitude of entrances to the neighborhood’s eclectic diversity, simultaneously reflecting inside vs. outside and private vs. public.


[Quelle: www.simonprestongallery.com]