Fabian Seiz
07 Sep - 05 Oct 2013
Fabian Seiz
Leftovers & Potentials, Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna, 2013, installation view, Leftovers & Potentials, 2013
metal, mirror and mixed media, three shelves
180 x 156 x 67 cm each
Leftovers & Potentials, Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna, 2013, installation view, Leftovers & Potentials, 2013
metal, mirror and mixed media, three shelves
180 x 156 x 67 cm each
FABIAN SEIZ
Leftovers & Potentials
7 September - 5 October 2013
Whereas Fabian Seiz's work has previously been defined by its intensive recycling of forms and materials, his new exhibition - Leftover and Potentials - engages with processes of circulation and repetition defined by variation and consumption. The exhibition's eponymous centerpiece is a metal shelving unit on which miniature reproductions or remnants of other works, as well as potential forms and materials have been placed in what Seiz describes as a subjective and for that reason subversive museum of his own practice. This is an archive of embryonic fragments that have been resuscitated, renamed, and recast by a logic of volutes and spirals, rather than of narratives and teleologies. The generous economy of this piece stands in marked contrast to the economy targeted by Mr. Odd Lots: a video of an actor imitating images of stock traders collected over several years. The cyclical upswings and collapses of the financial market over the past decade are echoed in the static poses of the actor, whose expressions range from grief to concern, tension to elation. Similar processes of translation and reinterpretation emerge in the other works on view: a portrait of George Washington in the Obama Oval Office is reinterpreted as an egg in Famous Eggs, while the similarly shaped oval hole in Looking at Air (Remake II)diverts the viewer's gaze to the oval of a window across the street from the gallery. Repetitions are the ground on which the subtle comedy of Seiz's variants and variations unfold, in a game whose parameters are constantly being consumed and recycled, cast and recast, altered and broken. His allegiance lies not with the rules and boundaries of his process, but with the potentialities that their betrayal unlocks.
Text by Julien Bismuth
Leftovers & Potentials
7 September - 5 October 2013
Whereas Fabian Seiz's work has previously been defined by its intensive recycling of forms and materials, his new exhibition - Leftover and Potentials - engages with processes of circulation and repetition defined by variation and consumption. The exhibition's eponymous centerpiece is a metal shelving unit on which miniature reproductions or remnants of other works, as well as potential forms and materials have been placed in what Seiz describes as a subjective and for that reason subversive museum of his own practice. This is an archive of embryonic fragments that have been resuscitated, renamed, and recast by a logic of volutes and spirals, rather than of narratives and teleologies. The generous economy of this piece stands in marked contrast to the economy targeted by Mr. Odd Lots: a video of an actor imitating images of stock traders collected over several years. The cyclical upswings and collapses of the financial market over the past decade are echoed in the static poses of the actor, whose expressions range from grief to concern, tension to elation. Similar processes of translation and reinterpretation emerge in the other works on view: a portrait of George Washington in the Obama Oval Office is reinterpreted as an egg in Famous Eggs, while the similarly shaped oval hole in Looking at Air (Remake II)diverts the viewer's gaze to the oval of a window across the street from the gallery. Repetitions are the ground on which the subtle comedy of Seiz's variants and variations unfold, in a game whose parameters are constantly being consumed and recycled, cast and recast, altered and broken. His allegiance lies not with the rules and boundaries of his process, but with the potentialities that their betrayal unlocks.
Text by Julien Bismuth