Art from the Sammlung Verbund Collection at the MAK

Written by Jack Bremmen Friday, 10 September 2010 23:48

Vienna, Austria - It is a work by the North-American artist Lawrence Weiner that gives the title to the MAK exhibition “HELD TOGETHER WITH WATER. Art from the Sammlung Verbund”: for the first time ever, the MAK ventures on the experiment of showing one of the most exciting corporate art collections. Installed on the floor of the MAK Entrée, “Held Together with Water” (Lawrence Weiner, 1993), a purely textual artistic articulation, leads visitors into the central space of the MAK Exhibition Hall where they are confronted with another textual work by Weiner, “One Way / Then Another Way / Then Another Way” (1998), mounted on a large wall-like spatial intervention. On exhibition until 16 September, 2007.

Since 2004, the Austrian Verbund Electricity Corporation has started to build an international collection of contemporary art, which places contemporary European and American works in dialogue with positions dating from the early 1970s and later. The Advisory Board of the Sammlung Verbund consists of Gabriele Schor as chief collection curator, Sean Rainbird (director, Stuttgart State Gallery), and Philipp Kaiser (curator, Basel Museum of Contemporary Art Basel / MOCA, Los Angeles). Following the maxim of “depth, not breadth”, the Sammlung Verbund focuses not on individual acquisitions, but on specific groups or bodies of work.

The MAK show provides the first occasion ever that the Sammlung Verbund, which concentrates on two focal themes, “Performance” and “Spaces / Places”, is made accessible to the general public.

“Performance” comprises almost the entire early work of Cindy Sherman, created 1975–1976, including her “Bus Riders” and “Murder Mystery People” series. In her famous “Untitled Film Stills” (1977–1980), which have long become icons of contemporary photo art, Sherman takes up film-noir aesthetics to enact stereotype images of femininity in film and in the media, confronting viewers with “simulacra” (Jean Baudrillard), which render the artist unrecognizable in the photographs. Grouped around the early work of Cindy Sherman is the feminist art avant-garde with works by Eleanor Antin, Hannah Wilke, Birgit Jürgenssen, Francesca Woodman, and VALIE EXPORT.

Several, partly freestanding walls structure the spacious MAK Exhibition Hall and provide the setting for the presentation of these artworks. The “Performance” section of the show also features the little known series “Arthur Rimbaud in New York” (1978–1979) by David Wojnarowicz, early works by Urs Lüthi and Gilbert & George as well as photographs by Sarah Lucas, Gillian Wearing, and an ironic video by Kate Gilmore.

Juxtaposed to this is a generous presentation on the theme of “Spaces / Places”. Fred Sandback’s minimalist spatial drawings consisting of fine threading were adapted for one wing of the MAK Exhibition Hall, where they appear to section space in seemingly tangible planes. An entirely different quality of space is unfolded by Ernesto Neto in his cage-like, organically contoured nylon installation “Tractatus IDeuses” (2005).

Lightboxes by Jeff Wall and photographs by Loan Nguyen mark out the subject of periphery and urban non-places. They are exhibited in the central space of the MAK Exhibition Hall together with works by Gabriel Orozco, Simon Starling, the space deconstructions of Gordon Matta-Clark, and four large-format “Filmstills” (2000) by Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler. The spatial construction on which “One Way / Then Another Way / Then Another Way” by Lawrence Weiner is mounted also has integrated booths for screenings of films and videos by Aïda Ruilova, Markus Schinwald, and Johanna Billing.

Adjoining the central hall is a spatial construction in which the film “Splitting” (1974) by Gordon Matta-Clark, the film installation “Line Describing a Cone” (1973) by Anthony McCall, the video “Interiors” (2006) by Ursula Mayer, and the slide and audio installation “Road Trip” (2004) by Janet Cardiff / George Bures Miller are shown.

For the first time in Europe, the MAK show presents Francis Alÿ’s nine-part film series “Choques”, scattered throughout the entire exhibition area: nine videos shot from different angles showing the artist’s collision with a dog.

A comprehensive catalogue will be published for the exhibition: “HELD TOGETHER WITH WATER. Art from the Sammlung Verbund”, ed. by Gabriele Schor, with a preface by Peter Noever and contributions by Yve-Alain Bois, Giovanni Carmine, Thierry de Duve, Olafur Eliasson, Briony Fer, Edith Futscher, Gilbert & George, Kate Gilmore, Inka Graeve Ingelmann, Patricia Grzonka, Ursula Pia Jauch, Gabriele Jutz, Cynthia Krell, Andrea Kroksnes, Richard Nonas, Mysoon Rizk, Ramin Schor, Walter Seidl, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Beate Söntgen, Geraldine Spiekermann, Gregor Stemmrich, Philip Ursprung, Jeffrey Weiss, 392 pages, 320 illustrations, Hatje Cantz Ostfildern, 2007, € 39.

Visit the MAK at : www.mak.at/