Now Forever

14.09.2018 - 20.10.2018

curated by_vienna 2018, viennaline, Wien / Österreich
Galerie Crone Wien, Wien / Österreich

Now Forever“ findet im Rahmen des Galerienfestivals „Curated_by“ statt, bei dem jedes Jahr 21 Wiener Galerien 21 internationale Kuratoren einladen, um der Öffentlichkeit 21 verschiedene Ausstellungen zu einem gemeinsamen, zentralen Thema zu präsentieren. In diesem Jahr steht das Festival unter dem Motto „Viennaline“ und befasst sich mit Wien als „Dauerlabor der Moderne und des Untergangs“.

Mark Rappolt nähert sich dem Thema, indem er unterschiedlichste Arbeiten aus den letzten 120 Jahren präsentiert, die einerseits für die Suche nach der kulturellen Identität einer globalen Moderne stehen, sich andererseits mit der Angst und Abschottung vor dem „Fremden an sich" beschäftigen....

In den Mittelpunkt der Ausstellung rückt er Christoph Schlingensiefs Polit- und Kunst-Performance „Bitte liebt Österreich!“ aus dem Jahr 2000. Schlingensief wandte sich damit gegen die damalige Regierung der konservativen ÖVP und der nationalliberalen FPÖ, mit der in Österreich erstmals seit 1945 eine rechtspopulistische Partei an die Macht kam. Auch die Arbeiten der anderen Künstler berühren Muster, Wurzel und Mechanismen eines tradierten und neuen Rechtspopulismus. Rappolt setzt sie bewusst in einen Kontext zu Schlingensiefs Performance „Bitte liebt Österreich“, obwohl oder gerade weil sie weit über Österreich und Europa hinaus verweisen. Sie befassen sich mit globalen Nord-Süd- und Ost-West-Konflikten, und zeigen auf diese Weise: Wien ist überall.

Mark Rappolt ist Chefredakteur der Kunstzeitschriften „Art Review“ und „Art Review Asia“. Er verfasste zahlreiche Bücher und Kataloge, unter anderem über Frank Gehry, Alex Katz, David Cronenberg und Slater Bradley. Mit Liam Gillick und Tom Eccles kuratierte er zuletzt die Ausstellung „Like a Moth to a Flame“ für die Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin.

Für das kuratorische Konzept von „Now Forever“ griff Mark Rappolt auf seine eigene Biografie und Familiengeschichte zurück. Seinen ausführlichen Text über die Ausstellung finden Sie hier.

[Quelle: Einladung]

Now Forever?, curated by MARK RAPPOLT, is our contribution to the gallery festival Curated_by „Viennaline?. Mark is the editor in chief of „Art Review?. For the show he chose works by Heman Chong, Valie Export, Josef Hoffmann, Mark Manders, Djordje Ozbolt, Paul Poet, Egon Schiele, Christoph Schlingensief, Anna Witt, Ming Wong, and Nil Yalter.

HERE IS MARK RAPPOLT'S TEXT on the idea and the concept of the exhibition:

During the early 1930s, Arumugam Viswalingam, at the time a general surgeon in the British-ruled Federated Malay States in Southeast Asia, was granted permission to travel to Vienna to study ophthalmology. Intriguingly, his experiences in the Austrian capital and in the rest of Europe led him to believe that racial prejudice was something that was more prevalent “there”—in the colonies—where he could directly feel its effects in every aspect of his life, rather than “here” in Europe, where power was contingent (thanks to various forms of democracy) as opposed to the permanent dominion of colonial rule. It was the powerful, he presumed, who had the right to decide how life should be lived and what was wrong and what was right.

In 2000, the German film and theater director Christoph Schlingensief directed the action "Bitte Liebt Österreich", a Big Brother-in- spired spectacle performed as part of the Wiener Festwochen. Schlingensief’s project featured twelve asylum seekers, imprisoned in a concentration camp made up of shipping- type containers installed next to the Vienna Opera House. The camp was topped by a sign reading “Ausländer Raus” and the immigrants were placed under public observation and subjected to daily expulsions (leading to de- portation) dictated by public vote until the twelve had been whittled down to a sole sur- vivor: this last immigrant was to win a cash prize and citizenship by marriage. At the time, Austria was governed, as it is today, by a coalition involving the far-right, anti-immi- gration Freedom Party (FPÖ). Schlingensief’s project as a whole reflected on the use and abuse of democracy, and the beginnings of a world in which any distinction between real and mediated experience had begun to collapse. And the ways in which, within this surreal space, previously dormant feelings of voyeurism, racism, and other forms of prejudice can be freely expressed, and as if without consequence.

Operating along an East–West access between Southeast Asia and Europe, the exhibition Now Forever, which takes its title from a slogan of the Vienna Tourist Board, explores meanings of “here” and of “there” and the ways Austria, and more specifically Vienna, presents itself to the world and the ways the world projects itself back. Moreover, the exhibition explores artmaking as a process of projecting our true and imagined selves into the world and examines how such projections shape the way we inhabit it. Along the way, it traces the tricky routes from the personal to the universal. On a side note, Arumugam was my grandfather.

Mark Rappolt
---
He had brought a large map representing
the sea, Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they
found it to be A map they could all understand.

“What’s the good of Mercator’s
North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?
So the Bellman would cry:
and the crew would reply
“They are really conventional signs!“

“Other maps are such shapes,
with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank:”
(So the crew would protest)
“that he’s bought us the best—
A perfect and absolute blank!”

Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark, 1876

[Quelle: Facebook]