Roland WEGERER
Roland Wegerer (°1974, Amstetten, Austria) creates media artworks, photos, sculptures and performances. By questioning the concept of movement, Wegerer tries to grasp language. Transformed into art, language becomes an ornament. At that moment, lots of ambiguities and indistinctness’s, which are inherent to the phenomenon, come to the surface.
His media artworks focus on the inability of communication which is used to visualize reality. The attempt of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content and the dysfunctions of language will be concentrated.
In short, the lacks of clear references are key elements in the work. By investigating language on a meta-level, he plays with the idea of the mortality of an artwork confronted with the power of a transitory appearance, which is, by being restricted in time, much more intense. Roland is also founder and director of the danubeVIDEOARTfestival and VOS|Roland Wegerer (http://vos.rolandwegerer.com)
Curatorial statement
This selection of Austrian video artist is dedicated to the main theme of Search/Searching.
Each of them is looking for different ways to express their research and results. As wide as the theme, there is also a wide bracket of video art such as found-footage, animation, documentation and performance.
While Virgil Widrich is looking for the historic image of robots in his video make/real, Daniel and Matthias Haffner try to explore a modern man. Both works are trying to investigate public common sense with their own tools. Elisabeth Kramer sends out three kings to exercise an Austrian tradition by looking for a little baby. And Katharina Swoboda is looking for a way to explain and interact with an artwork by Ursula Schultze-Bluhm called Pelzvogelkasten. Flucht „Fled“ is the title of Evelyn Kreineckers animation. This video shows animated drawings of people on their search for a safe place. Eginhartz Kanter closes the show with his search for perfect place to make his tag.
All of these six videos making a search (for something) to their subject of discussion. Each of them finds different answers.
WOW Austria
selection curated by Roland Wegerer
WIDRICH Virgil (Austria) – make/real, 2010 / 5min
HAFNER Daniel and Matthias (Austria) – MODERN MAN, 2014 / 5:44min
KRAMER Elisabeth (Austria) – “the magi”, 2017 / 1:30 min
SWOBODA Katharina (Austria) – Pelzvogelkasten, 2015 / 4:05min
KREINECKER Evelyn (Austria) – Flucht (Flight), 2015 / 2:38min
KANTER Eginhartz (austria) – Aufstieg (Rise), 2016 / 3:11min
1.
WIDRICH Virgil
Virgil Widrich, born 1967 in Salzburg, works on numerous multimedia and film productions. He is one of
the founders and Managing Directors of the multimedia company checkpointmedia GmbH, University Professor
of Art & Science at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and owner and Managing Director of Virgil
Widrich Film- und Multimediaproduktions G.m.b.H.
His first feature film is “Heller als der Mond” (“Brighter than the Moon”). His short film “Copy Shop” won
37 international awards and was nominated for the Oscar. “Fast Film” premiered in Cannes 2003 and won
36 awards until today. His newest film is “Night of a 1000 Hours”.
Virgil Widrich lives in Vienna.
make/real
2010 / 5min / Production: Virgil Widrich Film- und Multimediaproduktions G.m.b.H., Concept and direction:
Virgil Widrich, Editing, sound design: Oleg Prodeus, Material research: Joachim Schätz
A surreal montage of science fiction films about the public image of the robot, collected for the exhibition
“Robot Dreams” at the Kunsthaus Graz and the Museum Tinguely, Basel.
2.
HAFNER Daniel and Matthias
Hafner is born 1979, AT, lives and works in Vienna. His is artistic practice includes various creative fields,
ranging from visual art to performance and sound art. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna,
where he participated in the digital media and art in public space departments. Selected solo and group
exhibitions include: ACF Bratislava, SK; Kunsthalle Košice, SK; Frederick Kiesler Foundation, Vienna, AT;
Projektraum Viktor Bucher, AT; Kunsthaus Graz, AT; Akbank Artcenter Istanbul, TK.
MODERN MAN
2014 / 5:44min / Matthias Hafner (cinematographer / editor) and Daniel Hafner (idea)
This is the teaser to the performance which was part of the exhibition “Modern Man” June 12 – July 27,
2014, Kunsthalle / Hala umenia Košice, Slovakia.
3.
KRAMER Elisabeth
Elisabeth Kramer (*1980, Burghausen/ Germany) is a wood-carver, book-seller and she studied
sculpture and cultural studies at the University of Art and Design Linz, Austria and at the Academy of
Fine Arts Dresden, Germany. The focus of her mixed media work lays on installation and art in public
space, with an great emphasis to historical and so-called “religious” images. At the moment she lives
and works in Linz /Austria.
main works in public space: “legionaires of the moment”, Installation, PROGR, Bern/Switzerland, 2016. —
“easter sunday”. videoinstallation, church of Ursulin sisters, Linz, 2013.— “Augen, Schein, Wasser.” permanent
videoinstallation, church of Heiligenberg/Austria, 2013.— “viewer”. Monument for the upper-austrian
womens´ hospital, Linz/Austria, 2012.
“the magi”
2017 / 1:30 min / camera, video: Elisabeth Kramer, Sound: Pierre-Henri Wicomb/Elisabeth Kramer
„The magi“ is a set piece of the mixed-media installation “minimum requirement (first a missionary,
2016)”. It is a wryly told narrative of visual and lingual leftovers, which shape a society, a nation,
individuals and it subtile shows the contemporary western colonialization and their traditional logics.
The questions of the contribution of the masses in the future are not easily answered, so the video
scratches the expectations of the western world to the so-called Morgenland, the Eastern World.
4.
SWOBODA Katharina
Katharina Swoboda, born 1984, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and has been a PhD
student at the transdiciplinary doctorate programme at University of Fine Arts of Hamburg since 2014.
Katharina´s work is predominantly video-based. Recent exhibition includes: Mediterranea 18 Young Artists
Biennale in Tirana and Durres 2017; National Gallery in Sofia 2017; Neue Galerie Graz 2016. She received
several grants and awards, eg. from the Regional Government of Styria, Department of Culture and the
Austrian Federal Chancellery. She is member of the Golden Pixel Cooperative in Vienna.
Pelzvogelkasten
2015 / 4:05min /
camera: leopold leskovar, performance: annika scharm, sound: sara pinheiro/katharina
swoboda
Pelzvogelkasten [translated “fur-bird-box”] is originally an object created by Ursula Schultze-Bluhm, which
she made in the iconic year of 1968. It consists of what it is named after: a sewing box, which is covered
with fur and feathers with a dead pheasant on the top. The single boxes are filled with materials such as
beads, maize-cobs and little puppets. These concrete materials define the production of my video material,
in which the performer Annika Scharm is relating to the Pelzvogelkasten.
5.
KREINECKER Evelyn
Born 1971 in Grieskirchen, Austria. Lives and works as a freelance artist in Prambachkirchen.
Her work – which includes painting, drawing, prints and animated film – reflect the coherences of human
existence, exploring the space between public and privacy.
Flucht
2015 / 2:38min
Snapshots of situations of fleeing are created – drawn with charcoal on a piece of canvas. The images
change, replace one another, draw a path, tell a story, and get lost again, are abandoned, deleted, destroyed.
Only the last image remains, also as a sign of hope.
6.
KANTER Eginhartz
lives and works in Linz and Vienna (Austria)
Aufstieg (Rise)
2016 / 3:11min
Aufstieg (rise) is an attempt to contrast the massive aesthetic of a brutalist residential block with a poetic
gesture. The coexistence of nature and ruins is broken here by the action of a protagonist.