Bernd Oppl
Intermission
07 Sep - 08 Oct 2016
BERND OPPL
Intermission
7 September – 8 October 2016
Following residencies in Hungary and Croatia and the exhibition Spatial Distortion in the ground floor gallery (Parterre-Galerie), Bernd Oppl will be presenting work in his first larger solo exhibition Intermission in the Showroom of Galerie Krinzinger. In this show Bernd Oppl focuses on the interstices and the moments of transition as the gray zone of experience in which uncertainty prevails. These empty architectural spaces staged here by artist drift into the realm of the uncanny and mysterious.
Bernd Oppl uses the medium of the model to demonstrate something that is not there. The model opens up a space situated between fantasy and reality. Bernd Oppl simulates everyday, familiar spatial situations so that the perspectival shift towards something real is highlighted. His “Invisible Cinema 2016” is a miniature movie house with a camera at the spot usually filled by a film projector. In “Invisible Cinema” the viewer unwittingly becomes a main performer. The predefined cinema setting is relinquished, with the viewer now part of the voyeuristic apparatus.
In a series of Dioramas the artist creates a mise-en-scène of completely empty spaces. The viewer sees a series of 3D-prints of non-descript spaces of transition and pause. Given their monochrome simplicity, these random places become surfaces onto which fantasies and memories can be projected. A sparsely furnished space can be seen in the piece “Twilight State”; it could be a child’s room or a first apartment as a space of transition. The nocturnal shadows of floodlights that enter the room through the window evoke phantasms: the shadow as a recurring uncanny element that activates the fantasy and leads one into the world of dreams. “The Deserted TV Station” recalls the intermission, which lets us pause in a second of silence. Here we see the TV machinery standing still, a functional space in a moment of non-functioning, right after when what happened is erased, before something next might appear.
A pause in the moment of patient or anxious waiting, while programs or data files are being opened, is imposed on the users. In this interim time a rotating bar symbol or “loading spinner” is blended in. In “Loading Spinner”, Bernd Oppl references the early days of cinema. The rotating bar is set free as a kind of staged aimless waiting illustrated by a rotating cinema machine. In the photo series “Ephemeral Places” backdrops of non-sites and transitional spaces such as waiting rooms, passages, sleeping halls are staged as anonymous and temporary spaces. In the photo works, the artist has subjected architectural models to a chaotic process by adding substances, which that react chaotically in these spatial structures. In this tension of contrasts between construction and chance, a new unexpected spatial situation emerges.
Bernd Oppl was born 1980 in Innsbruck. Lives and works in Vienna. Main solo shows include: 2015: Kunstraum Goethestrasse, Linz, AUT, 2014: Georgia Museum of Arts, USA, RLB Atelier Lienz, AT, Amstel 41, Amsterdam, NL , 2013: artpartments, Vienna, AT , 2012: Neue Galerie, Innsbruck, AT, Delay Room, k/haus Videogalerie, Vienna, AT, 2010: MQ- Artist Quarterly, Sotheby’s, Vienna, AT,2009: Kunstverein das das weisse haus, Vienna, AT. Works by Bernd Oppl have also been shown in the group shows at the following museums and art spaces: Peripheral Influence, Kanderdine Art Gallery, Saskatoon, CA, (2016), Adjacent Realities, Cultural Forum, London,UK (2015), “Micro-Macro“, tbc, Buenos Aires, ARG, (2015), „Desiring the Real. Austria Contemporary – Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, Shanghai, CN (2015), “Faceless”, De Markten, Brussels, BE, (2015), “MicroMacro”, Musée Ziem, Martiques, F (2015), “Desiring the Real. Austria Contemporary” University Museum and Art Gallery Hong Kong, Hong Kong, CN, (2015), “Zeitlose Zeichen”, ACF London, UK, (2014), “Hybrid Art”, marka xx years, Moscow, RU, (2014), “Façadism”, NEST, The Hague, NL, (2014)...
Intermission
7 September – 8 October 2016
Following residencies in Hungary and Croatia and the exhibition Spatial Distortion in the ground floor gallery (Parterre-Galerie), Bernd Oppl will be presenting work in his first larger solo exhibition Intermission in the Showroom of Galerie Krinzinger. In this show Bernd Oppl focuses on the interstices and the moments of transition as the gray zone of experience in which uncertainty prevails. These empty architectural spaces staged here by artist drift into the realm of the uncanny and mysterious.
Bernd Oppl uses the medium of the model to demonstrate something that is not there. The model opens up a space situated between fantasy and reality. Bernd Oppl simulates everyday, familiar spatial situations so that the perspectival shift towards something real is highlighted. His “Invisible Cinema 2016” is a miniature movie house with a camera at the spot usually filled by a film projector. In “Invisible Cinema” the viewer unwittingly becomes a main performer. The predefined cinema setting is relinquished, with the viewer now part of the voyeuristic apparatus.
In a series of Dioramas the artist creates a mise-en-scène of completely empty spaces. The viewer sees a series of 3D-prints of non-descript spaces of transition and pause. Given their monochrome simplicity, these random places become surfaces onto which fantasies and memories can be projected. A sparsely furnished space can be seen in the piece “Twilight State”; it could be a child’s room or a first apartment as a space of transition. The nocturnal shadows of floodlights that enter the room through the window evoke phantasms: the shadow as a recurring uncanny element that activates the fantasy and leads one into the world of dreams. “The Deserted TV Station” recalls the intermission, which lets us pause in a second of silence. Here we see the TV machinery standing still, a functional space in a moment of non-functioning, right after when what happened is erased, before something next might appear.
A pause in the moment of patient or anxious waiting, while programs or data files are being opened, is imposed on the users. In this interim time a rotating bar symbol or “loading spinner” is blended in. In “Loading Spinner”, Bernd Oppl references the early days of cinema. The rotating bar is set free as a kind of staged aimless waiting illustrated by a rotating cinema machine. In the photo series “Ephemeral Places” backdrops of non-sites and transitional spaces such as waiting rooms, passages, sleeping halls are staged as anonymous and temporary spaces. In the photo works, the artist has subjected architectural models to a chaotic process by adding substances, which that react chaotically in these spatial structures. In this tension of contrasts between construction and chance, a new unexpected spatial situation emerges.
Bernd Oppl was born 1980 in Innsbruck. Lives and works in Vienna. Main solo shows include: 2015: Kunstraum Goethestrasse, Linz, AUT, 2014: Georgia Museum of Arts, USA, RLB Atelier Lienz, AT, Amstel 41, Amsterdam, NL , 2013: artpartments, Vienna, AT , 2012: Neue Galerie, Innsbruck, AT, Delay Room, k/haus Videogalerie, Vienna, AT, 2010: MQ- Artist Quarterly, Sotheby’s, Vienna, AT,2009: Kunstverein das das weisse haus, Vienna, AT. Works by Bernd Oppl have also been shown in the group shows at the following museums and art spaces: Peripheral Influence, Kanderdine Art Gallery, Saskatoon, CA, (2016), Adjacent Realities, Cultural Forum, London,UK (2015), “Micro-Macro“, tbc, Buenos Aires, ARG, (2015), „Desiring the Real. Austria Contemporary – Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, Shanghai, CN (2015), “Faceless”, De Markten, Brussels, BE, (2015), “MicroMacro”, Musée Ziem, Martiques, F (2015), “Desiring the Real. Austria Contemporary” University Museum and Art Gallery Hong Kong, Hong Kong, CN, (2015), “Zeitlose Zeichen”, ACF London, UK, (2014), “Hybrid Art”, marka xx years, Moscow, RU, (2014), “Façadism”, NEST, The Hague, NL, (2014)...