February 2001
New acquisitions from Armleder to ZittelJohn M Armleder, Daniele Buetti, Sylvie Fleury, Joseph Kosuth, Gerold Miller, Kirsten Mosher, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Ugo Rondinone, Franz Erhard Walther, Andrea Zittel
Gerwald Rockenschaub,
Franz Erhard Walther
Andrea Zittel
John M Armleder
Sylvie Fleury
Kirsten Mosher
Gerold Miller
Sylvie Fleury
*1961 in GenevaUntitled (Car Magazine Covers),
1999 Installation of 9 Covers, Foto on Aluminium, Unique ObjectSylvie Fleury's materials are the fetishized goods, luxury objects and logo cult of the spheres of mass and high culture that are defined as feminine, but increasingly by the world of male-defined status symbols as well. Her subject is fetishization in art and everyday culture and the removal of the distinction between the sexes.
Her series of photographic blow-ups of Car Magazine Covers and the earlier Playgirl Magazine series (1994) should be seen in this context as the product of a surface aesthetic that affects every sphere of life, as well as symbols of the consumer society. Viewed from this perspective, men's bodies as well as the cars and women's bodies are products of the consumer-goods society. They, too, are manufactured, just like the images of them that are offered to us.
Kirsten Mosher
*1963 in New York, lives in New YorkCarmen 1-3, Carmen 4. It's civitization, Satellite Neighbourhood, 1994-1997 Video
Kirsten Mosher's Video series Carmen explores the border between nature and civilization visible, the border between private and public space, between the place where art is found and places for everyday life.
The principal protagonists of these videos are baterydriven toy soldiers In Carmen 1, 2 and 3 the soldiers crawl around at a New York street intersection, on an expressway, finally around a camp fire in the forest. In It's civilization, five Carmen are crawling along a snowy path through a forest. They are heading for a vantage point from which they can look down on the town.
Satellite Neighbourhood shows Carmen and little trees, suspended from parachutes. They are being thrown down alternatively from the roof of the New York Kunsthalle and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, into the stream of traffic in these two cities. They float slowly down, then the sequence ends with an abrupt cut shortly before they hit the ground in the midst of the urban chaos.
Gerold Miller
*1961 in Altshausenhard:edged, 1999 (light grey, dark grey, dark blue, orange) Aluminium/Lacquer
For about ten years Gerold Miller has been devoting himself to the question of ‚pictoriality' in the border area of sculpture, three-dimensional object and relief, of the restricted wall surface and sculpturally and pictorially defined space as supports that open associations with painterly aspects.
In the new "hard:edge" work-group the readymade aspect comes into the foreground: the moulding strips are identical in their basic form, and vary only in thickness according to size. The lacquer is chosen from a professional painting firm's range. The personal moment is intentionally minimalized, so that the "hard:edged" group can also be understood as a commentary on the entering of modern manufacturing processes into arts.
