THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. Sculptural Discourses
November 23, 2006–April 29, 2007 | TBA21, Vienna
November 23, 2006–April 29, 2007 | TBA21, Vienna
Jeppe Hein – Reflecting Object, 2006
Installation view: THIS IS NOT FOR YOU, TBA21, Vienna, 2006-2007
Photo: Michael Strasser | TBA21
Installation view: THIS IS NOT FOR YOU, TBA21, Vienna, 2006-2007
Photo: Michael Strasser | TBA21
Past
Exhibitions
Sculptures, objects, and sculptural installations from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary collection constitute the thematic focal point of the exhibition THIS IS NOT FOR YOU: Sculptural Discourses. Sculptural practices today encompass a diversity of approaches, materials and formats which all offer a mediated and physical encounter with the real. This increasingly expansive concept of sculpture presupposes a complex entanglement of object, image, text, conceptual framing and the viewer’s reception. The works presented here are part of and the productive continuation of a historic development of the plastic form that extends across the ready-made, objet trouvé, primary objects and into contextual art and institutional critique of the 1980s and 1990s and their critical experiments with space and objects.
The transformation of the institutional space, its shift and activation as a place for art is renegotiated within the framework of THIS IS NOT FOR YOU by the works altering the floors, walls, light, furnishings and color of the exhibition space by artists such as Jim Lambie, Heimo Zobernig, Jorge Pardo and Gerwald Rockenschaub (color concept). These works attempt to influence the observer’s relationship to reception, participation, and imagination through the construction of particular spatial situations and consequently break through the conventions of order, stability, and controls of the exhibition space.
Geographical and cultural relationalities are established throughout the exhibition to rethink the relation between the most diverse narratives: the fragility of authoritative cultural and political concepts (social welfare state, individual living space, air defense, militarism, and democracy); the relevance of popular culture, heritage and artisanal folklore to contemporary practice; and the strategies of ethnographic investigations as strategies for preservation and memorialization.
The light sculpture by Monica Bonvincini, NOTFORYOU, which inspired the title of the exhibition, uses language as an expression of power structures (prohibition / command) but is formally derived from advertising billboards and carnival lights. The slight change of the signifiers contain an affirmative demand to read and re-read Bonvincini’s sign, because with each reading, a new configuration of blinking light displays a new variant of reading to the reader.
The transformation of the institutional space, its shift and activation as a place for art is renegotiated within the framework of THIS IS NOT FOR YOU by the works altering the floors, walls, light, furnishings and color of the exhibition space by artists such as Jim Lambie, Heimo Zobernig, Jorge Pardo and Gerwald Rockenschaub (color concept). These works attempt to influence the observer’s relationship to reception, participation, and imagination through the construction of particular spatial situations and consequently break through the conventions of order, stability, and controls of the exhibition space.
Geographical and cultural relationalities are established throughout the exhibition to rethink the relation between the most diverse narratives: the fragility of authoritative cultural and political concepts (social welfare state, individual living space, air defense, militarism, and democracy); the relevance of popular culture, heritage and artisanal folklore to contemporary practice; and the strategies of ethnographic investigations as strategies for preservation and memorialization.
The light sculpture by Monica Bonvincini, NOTFORYOU, which inspired the title of the exhibition, uses language as an expression of power structures (prohibition / command) but is formally derived from advertising billboards and carnival lights. The slight change of the signifiers contain an affirmative demand to read and re-read Bonvincini’s sign, because with each reading, a new configuration of blinking light displays a new variant of reading to the reader.