Josef Dabernig
FILM, PHOTOGRAPHY, TEXT, OBJECT, BUILDING
02 Jul - 04 Sep 2005
The exhibition is being held as part of the "HeimatModerne" project, a joint initiative by various Leipzig institutions and groups, supported by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes. The sponsoring organisation Experimentale e.V. is joined by: Forum zeitgenössischer Musik Leipzig e.V, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Büro für urbane Projekte, General Panel and raum4.
So far it has principally been Josef Dabernig's films, such as "Wisla", "WARS" and "Rosa coeli", that have received international attention. Now for the first time this one-man exhibition brings together different forms of expressive media – film, photography, text, object and building – and highlights their contentual-conceptual association. Moreover, the exhibition was developed by Dabernig for the gallery's new building. Since the late eighties Dabernig's sculptures have been based on comprehensible systems of order, and their point of departure may lie within the material itself which is used in each case, such as in the width of the l and u-form profiles and /or in the dimensions of the exhibition space. Deviations of form are either built into the works themselves or arise in confrontation with their particular architectural milieu. This also applies to the motif designed by him for the invitation folder: a rigorous grid is superimposed on the post-GDR architecture of the Leipzig Marriott Hotel, in the glazing of which the modern architecture of the Brühl slab buildings is reflected, as if this were now at once reworked or disguised under new, rational premises. The discrepancies which emerge between the hotel building and Dabernig's drawn aluminium grid in addition mark ideological conflicts materialised in architecture, such as that between modernism and post-modernism.
His other works also revolve around functionalism, rationalisation, perfect organisational schemata and deviations from them, errors and disturbances. In his films Dabernig addresses functional processes and conventions in society which have lost their causative foundation and develop a dynamic of their own. In the textual works, hand-written extracts from books with a normative function such as "Schönheit und Verdauung oder die Verjüngung des Menschen nur durch sachgemäße Wartung des Darmes" (Beauty and Digestion. Rejuvenation through Proper Servicing of the Intestines) after F. X. Mayr (1920), he focuses on subjective attitudes, personal interests and judgements of the various authors and the deviations in the order of the handwriting itself.
But even if the rigorously regulated aluminium grids, the strictly composed films or the meticulously copied-out books bring associations of rationalism and functionality, they emancipate themselves from functional demands in that rationality is submitted to subjective initial parameters, deviations from given structures are built-in, objects no longer have their usual function and people carry out apparently compulsive functions divorced from an original purpose. Dabernig's works stand in a mimetic relation to rationality and functionalism of both the old and new stamp; but for all their similarity they allow precisely that critical distance which is necessary to reflect rationality and functionalism in their respective ideological configurations.
Subsequent to Leipzig the exhibition will be shown in the Bunkier Sztuki in Krakow and in the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck. The publishers Walther König will be bringing out a substantial bilingual workbook with texts by Josef Dabernig, Silvia Eiblmayr, Christian Kravagna, Matthias Michalka, Barbara Steiner and Igor Zabel.
So far it has principally been Josef Dabernig's films, such as "Wisla", "WARS" and "Rosa coeli", that have received international attention. Now for the first time this one-man exhibition brings together different forms of expressive media – film, photography, text, object and building – and highlights their contentual-conceptual association. Moreover, the exhibition was developed by Dabernig for the gallery's new building. Since the late eighties Dabernig's sculptures have been based on comprehensible systems of order, and their point of departure may lie within the material itself which is used in each case, such as in the width of the l and u-form profiles and /or in the dimensions of the exhibition space. Deviations of form are either built into the works themselves or arise in confrontation with their particular architectural milieu. This also applies to the motif designed by him for the invitation folder: a rigorous grid is superimposed on the post-GDR architecture of the Leipzig Marriott Hotel, in the glazing of which the modern architecture of the Brühl slab buildings is reflected, as if this were now at once reworked or disguised under new, rational premises. The discrepancies which emerge between the hotel building and Dabernig's drawn aluminium grid in addition mark ideological conflicts materialised in architecture, such as that between modernism and post-modernism.
His other works also revolve around functionalism, rationalisation, perfect organisational schemata and deviations from them, errors and disturbances. In his films Dabernig addresses functional processes and conventions in society which have lost their causative foundation and develop a dynamic of their own. In the textual works, hand-written extracts from books with a normative function such as "Schönheit und Verdauung oder die Verjüngung des Menschen nur durch sachgemäße Wartung des Darmes" (Beauty and Digestion. Rejuvenation through Proper Servicing of the Intestines) after F. X. Mayr (1920), he focuses on subjective attitudes, personal interests and judgements of the various authors and the deviations in the order of the handwriting itself.
But even if the rigorously regulated aluminium grids, the strictly composed films or the meticulously copied-out books bring associations of rationalism and functionality, they emancipate themselves from functional demands in that rationality is submitted to subjective initial parameters, deviations from given structures are built-in, objects no longer have their usual function and people carry out apparently compulsive functions divorced from an original purpose. Dabernig's works stand in a mimetic relation to rationality and functionalism of both the old and new stamp; but for all their similarity they allow precisely that critical distance which is necessary to reflect rationality and functionalism in their respective ideological configurations.
Subsequent to Leipzig the exhibition will be shown in the Bunkier Sztuki in Krakow and in the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck. The publishers Walther König will be bringing out a substantial bilingual workbook with texts by Josef Dabernig, Silvia Eiblmayr, Christian Kravagna, Matthias Michalka, Barbara Steiner and Igor Zabel.