Lois Weinberger
Die Rückseite der Landschaft
21 Nov 2018 - 12 Jan 2019
LOIS WEINBERGER
Die Rückseite der Landschaft
21 November 2018 – 12 January 2019
Weinberger’s Wunderkammer
Lois Weinberger is presenting works from over forty years at Galerie Krinzinger in a show titled “Die Rückseite der Landschaft”. A re-encounter – from nature.
Nature is difficult to grasp no matter where you draw the boundaries. For Lois Weinberger this GRASPING has, for decades, been associated with a land of curiosity, a realm of research and an artistic field. From November 20, it will be possible to trace this process of grasping at Galerie Krinzinger where Weinberger presented his work for the first time in 1983. Following numerous exhibitions that, in just the last couple of years, have led the artist to Athens, Kassel, Besancon, Paris, Berlin, Kathmandu or Tokyo, he has landed in Vienna once again and has now turned Galerie Krinzinger into a place of new – and renewed – encounter. 35 years following his first show at this gallery, the drawings, sculptures, notes and photographs exhibited in a show titled “The Backside of Landscape” offer a compelling look back at a long path featuring a number of artistic memories and new discoveries. An end to this path is not in sight. And that’s certainly good so.
Again and again Lois Weinberger, who has received multiple awards, is attributed with having art as his theme, but given the various fields that the artist cultivates and works in, this falls short. Weinberger is someone who reflects, observes, translates, researches, documents, discovers; he is an everyday archaeologist, someone curious, someone who takes others by surprise, analyzes and tells stories. His political-poetic approach covers all marginal zones like a net. He sees these zones as worthy of study and calls hierarchies into question in so doing. And don’t forget: At the Documenta X Weinberger covered a shut-down train track measuring a length of 100 meters with all manner of neophytes, that is, “immigrated” plants from South and South Eastern Europe. In the process he created an installation that became an internationally recognized metaphor of migration processes in our time, with ethnopoetic references that extend way beyond them.
“Das über Pflanzen ist eins mit ihnen” (that about plants is one with them”), Lois Weinberger wrote this in connection with an installation mounted in front of the Kunsthalle Vienna in 1997. Weinberger’s plants, however, are not just one of his many tools. His preoccupation with things that he finds (or maybe it’s the other way around?) is something that he understands as “engaging with oneself and with our actions”. His gardens are sites of “observing” and “simply letting happen”. He studies the meaning of changes that relate neither with the profane such as the “Garden Eden” nor can be pinned down to aesthetic or local criteria.
Among Weinberger’s letters of his both consistent and surprising formal idiom one finds the nodding thistle as well as animal mummies, branches, steel, plastic bags, stones, horns, textiles, products from a DIY market, wild stonecrop or found pieces from the edge of a road all of which may become protagonists of Weinberger’s mise-en-scènes. There is no medium that seems foreign to him, if it is suitable for giving form to his treasure of knowledge. The artist moves this like a shield in front of him. Behind it he concocts one thing or another, creating references and expanding on them. They go by the name of fine arts as well as literature, politics, philosophy, ethology, history and otherwise.
The exhibition at Galerie Krinzinger is like every one of the artist’s shows arranged to be retrospect. This enables one to delve into, to see, to experience, to learn, sometimes even to be amused at Weinberger’s proliferating, often visionary world which since the early 1990s has contributed in a fundamental way to the debate on art and nature. Weinberger’s world is a veritable ‘wunderkammer’, cabinet of curiosities and a lab for ideas. The artist looks back so as to be able to look ahead, discovering things that he translates for his audience in order to reveal a story. The viewer’s interpretative sovereignty is challenged. Weinberger, a two-time participant at the documenta and Biennale Venice is a receiver, transmitter and wanderer on new paths that plant new standards and perspectives in the minds of the viewers of his work. On view up until 12. 01. 2019.
Michael Hausenblas
Lois Weinberger was born in Stams, Tyrol, in 1947. Today he lives and works in Vienna, Gars am Kamp and Innsbruck.
www.galerie-krinzinger.at
www.loisweinberger.net
Some of his exhibitions and works in the public space include:
2019 Tinguely Museum, Basel (EA) – Watari-Um Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokio (EA) – Reborn Art Festival, Aij-Island, Miyagi, Japan -- Bruegel’s Eye, Dilbeek / Brussels – Schönheit vor Weisheit, Tiroler Landesmuseum, Innsbruck -- 2018 frac franche comté, Besancon (EA+ Wild Cube permanent) – salle principale, Paris (EA) – Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (EA) - 2017 documenta 14 Athens + Kassel – Lois Weinberger conjunctions with Heath Bunting and Ladislav Zajac, nGbk, Berlin (EA) -- Jardin Infini, Centre Pompidou Metz – Naturgeschichten / Spuren des Politischen, MUMOK, Vienna - Econvention Europe: Current Art to Reimagine Ecologies, Museum De Domijnen, Sittard – Nah und Fern, Sculpture Triennale Bingen – The City, my Studio / The City, my Life, Kathmandu International Art Festival: Third Edition -- Der Canaletto Blick, Laubreise, Erste Bank Campus Vienna (permanent) -- 2016 salle principale, Paris (EA) -- Économie de la Tension, CAC Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-lesEaux -- Plant Culture, Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester -- Aha, this is my natural habitat, mariondecannière artspace, Antwerpen -- Die Sprache der Dinge. Materialgeschichten aus der Sammlung, 21er Haus Belvedere Vienna -- UNGENAU, De Halle Geel, Belgium -- 2015 La Stanza della Seta Palazzo Milio, Ficarra, Sicily (EA) -- Kunsthalle Mainz (EA) – Invasion, NOW – Esterházy Contemporary, Eisenstadt (permanent) -- Köln Skulptur #8, #9, Sculpture park Cologne -- D’une main invisible, salle principale, Paris – Art Eco, Museum Cultur Strombeek, Ghent -- 2014 S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent (EA) -- Douglas Hyde Gallery Dublin (EA) -- Soleil politique, Museion Bozen -- Landscape: the virtual, the actual, the possible? GuangDong Times Museum, Guangzhou – Kadist Foundation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco – 2013 Garden, Villa Merkel, Esslingen (permanent) -- Wild Cage, Universalmuseum Joanneum Graz (permanent) – Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum (EA) -- Berlin Photo, Teutloff Photo Collection, Bielefeld – New Collection, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin -- Ephemeropterae, TBA21, Vienna -- (un)natural limits, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York -- 2012 GARDEN Gare de Rennes, Les Prairies Biennale d’Art Contemporain Rennes (EA) -- Botanica, Villa Dieu Seul Sait, Cotonou, Benin (solo) – Kunst nach 45, Städel Museum, Frankfurt -- The Nature of Disappearance, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York -- Tropicomania, Betonsalon / Triennale Paris -- 2011 Musée d’ Art Moderne Saint Etienne (EA) -- Wild Cube, 21er Haus Bevedere Vienna (permanent) -- Spiele im Park – performative Skulptur in der Villa Schöningen, Potsdam -- 2010 6. Biennale of Contemporary Art Gyumri, Armenia – 2009 Venice Biennial, Austrian Pavillon -- The Death of the Audience, Vienna Secession -- tranzit, Bratislava (EA) -- Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz (EA) – 2007 Kunsthalle Gießen (EA) – Silent dialogue-invisible communication, NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo – aut, Innsbruck (EA) -- 2006 Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (EA) – WE HUMANS ARE FREE, 21st Century Museum, Kanazawa, Japan – Future Garden, Toyota Museum, Toyota City, Japan -- EXPO Japan, Nagoya City Arts Museum -- 2005 S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent (EA) – Involution, Centre d’art contempoarin, Bretigny -- 2004 Roof Garden, Rathaus Vienna (permanent) -- Brandt’s Klaedefabrik, Odense, DK (EA) – Hortus and Botany, Liverpool Biennial -- 2003 Kunstverein Hannover (EA) -- Villa Merkel, Esslingen (EA) -- Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (EA) – 2002 Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (EA) - - Unexpected selection, The Art Museum Miami -- Uncommon Denominator, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art -- Bonner Kunstverein (EA) -- Garden, Landesmuseum Lower Austria, Government Sector, St. Pölten (permanent) 2001 Locus/Focus, Sonsbeek 9, Arnhem – Skulptur-Biennale Münsterland -- 2000 Museum Moderner Kunst 20er Haus Vienna (EA) -- Freud Museum, London (EA) -- Spacex Gallery, Exeter, UK (EA) -- Zeitwenden, Kunstmuseum Bonn; Museum Moderner Kunst Wien -- Camden Arts Centre, London (EA) – 1999 HIRIYA-DUMP, Tel Aviv Museum of Art -- Wild Cube, University for Social and Economic Science, Innsbruck (permanent) – Watari-Um, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (EA) – 1997 documenta X, Kassel -- 1996 Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (EA) – 1995 Vienna Secession (EA) – 1992 Kunstverein Salzburg (EA) -- 1991 21. Sao Paulo Biennial – 1986 De Skulptura, Wiener Festwochen, Messepalast, Vienna 1983 Galerie Krinzinger, Innsbruck (EA) -- Galerie nächst St. Stephan Vienna (EA)
Die Rückseite der Landschaft
21 November 2018 – 12 January 2019
Weinberger’s Wunderkammer
Lois Weinberger is presenting works from over forty years at Galerie Krinzinger in a show titled “Die Rückseite der Landschaft”. A re-encounter – from nature.
Nature is difficult to grasp no matter where you draw the boundaries. For Lois Weinberger this GRASPING has, for decades, been associated with a land of curiosity, a realm of research and an artistic field. From November 20, it will be possible to trace this process of grasping at Galerie Krinzinger where Weinberger presented his work for the first time in 1983. Following numerous exhibitions that, in just the last couple of years, have led the artist to Athens, Kassel, Besancon, Paris, Berlin, Kathmandu or Tokyo, he has landed in Vienna once again and has now turned Galerie Krinzinger into a place of new – and renewed – encounter. 35 years following his first show at this gallery, the drawings, sculptures, notes and photographs exhibited in a show titled “The Backside of Landscape” offer a compelling look back at a long path featuring a number of artistic memories and new discoveries. An end to this path is not in sight. And that’s certainly good so.
Again and again Lois Weinberger, who has received multiple awards, is attributed with having art as his theme, but given the various fields that the artist cultivates and works in, this falls short. Weinberger is someone who reflects, observes, translates, researches, documents, discovers; he is an everyday archaeologist, someone curious, someone who takes others by surprise, analyzes and tells stories. His political-poetic approach covers all marginal zones like a net. He sees these zones as worthy of study and calls hierarchies into question in so doing. And don’t forget: At the Documenta X Weinberger covered a shut-down train track measuring a length of 100 meters with all manner of neophytes, that is, “immigrated” plants from South and South Eastern Europe. In the process he created an installation that became an internationally recognized metaphor of migration processes in our time, with ethnopoetic references that extend way beyond them.
“Das über Pflanzen ist eins mit ihnen” (that about plants is one with them”), Lois Weinberger wrote this in connection with an installation mounted in front of the Kunsthalle Vienna in 1997. Weinberger’s plants, however, are not just one of his many tools. His preoccupation with things that he finds (or maybe it’s the other way around?) is something that he understands as “engaging with oneself and with our actions”. His gardens are sites of “observing” and “simply letting happen”. He studies the meaning of changes that relate neither with the profane such as the “Garden Eden” nor can be pinned down to aesthetic or local criteria.
Among Weinberger’s letters of his both consistent and surprising formal idiom one finds the nodding thistle as well as animal mummies, branches, steel, plastic bags, stones, horns, textiles, products from a DIY market, wild stonecrop or found pieces from the edge of a road all of which may become protagonists of Weinberger’s mise-en-scènes. There is no medium that seems foreign to him, if it is suitable for giving form to his treasure of knowledge. The artist moves this like a shield in front of him. Behind it he concocts one thing or another, creating references and expanding on them. They go by the name of fine arts as well as literature, politics, philosophy, ethology, history and otherwise.
The exhibition at Galerie Krinzinger is like every one of the artist’s shows arranged to be retrospect. This enables one to delve into, to see, to experience, to learn, sometimes even to be amused at Weinberger’s proliferating, often visionary world which since the early 1990s has contributed in a fundamental way to the debate on art and nature. Weinberger’s world is a veritable ‘wunderkammer’, cabinet of curiosities and a lab for ideas. The artist looks back so as to be able to look ahead, discovering things that he translates for his audience in order to reveal a story. The viewer’s interpretative sovereignty is challenged. Weinberger, a two-time participant at the documenta and Biennale Venice is a receiver, transmitter and wanderer on new paths that plant new standards and perspectives in the minds of the viewers of his work. On view up until 12. 01. 2019.
Michael Hausenblas
Lois Weinberger was born in Stams, Tyrol, in 1947. Today he lives and works in Vienna, Gars am Kamp and Innsbruck.
www.galerie-krinzinger.at
www.loisweinberger.net
Some of his exhibitions and works in the public space include:
2019 Tinguely Museum, Basel (EA) – Watari-Um Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokio (EA) – Reborn Art Festival, Aij-Island, Miyagi, Japan -- Bruegel’s Eye, Dilbeek / Brussels – Schönheit vor Weisheit, Tiroler Landesmuseum, Innsbruck -- 2018 frac franche comté, Besancon (EA+ Wild Cube permanent) – salle principale, Paris (EA) – Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (EA) - 2017 documenta 14 Athens + Kassel – Lois Weinberger conjunctions with Heath Bunting and Ladislav Zajac, nGbk, Berlin (EA) -- Jardin Infini, Centre Pompidou Metz – Naturgeschichten / Spuren des Politischen, MUMOK, Vienna - Econvention Europe: Current Art to Reimagine Ecologies, Museum De Domijnen, Sittard – Nah und Fern, Sculpture Triennale Bingen – The City, my Studio / The City, my Life, Kathmandu International Art Festival: Third Edition -- Der Canaletto Blick, Laubreise, Erste Bank Campus Vienna (permanent) -- 2016 salle principale, Paris (EA) -- Économie de la Tension, CAC Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-lesEaux -- Plant Culture, Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester -- Aha, this is my natural habitat, mariondecannière artspace, Antwerpen -- Die Sprache der Dinge. Materialgeschichten aus der Sammlung, 21er Haus Belvedere Vienna -- UNGENAU, De Halle Geel, Belgium -- 2015 La Stanza della Seta Palazzo Milio, Ficarra, Sicily (EA) -- Kunsthalle Mainz (EA) – Invasion, NOW – Esterházy Contemporary, Eisenstadt (permanent) -- Köln Skulptur #8, #9, Sculpture park Cologne -- D’une main invisible, salle principale, Paris – Art Eco, Museum Cultur Strombeek, Ghent -- 2014 S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent (EA) -- Douglas Hyde Gallery Dublin (EA) -- Soleil politique, Museion Bozen -- Landscape: the virtual, the actual, the possible? GuangDong Times Museum, Guangzhou – Kadist Foundation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco – 2013 Garden, Villa Merkel, Esslingen (permanent) -- Wild Cage, Universalmuseum Joanneum Graz (permanent) – Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum (EA) -- Berlin Photo, Teutloff Photo Collection, Bielefeld – New Collection, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin -- Ephemeropterae, TBA21, Vienna -- (un)natural limits, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York -- 2012 GARDEN Gare de Rennes, Les Prairies Biennale d’Art Contemporain Rennes (EA) -- Botanica, Villa Dieu Seul Sait, Cotonou, Benin (solo) – Kunst nach 45, Städel Museum, Frankfurt -- The Nature of Disappearance, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York -- Tropicomania, Betonsalon / Triennale Paris -- 2011 Musée d’ Art Moderne Saint Etienne (EA) -- Wild Cube, 21er Haus Bevedere Vienna (permanent) -- Spiele im Park – performative Skulptur in der Villa Schöningen, Potsdam -- 2010 6. Biennale of Contemporary Art Gyumri, Armenia – 2009 Venice Biennial, Austrian Pavillon -- The Death of the Audience, Vienna Secession -- tranzit, Bratislava (EA) -- Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz (EA) – 2007 Kunsthalle Gießen (EA) – Silent dialogue-invisible communication, NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo – aut, Innsbruck (EA) -- 2006 Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (EA) – WE HUMANS ARE FREE, 21st Century Museum, Kanazawa, Japan – Future Garden, Toyota Museum, Toyota City, Japan -- EXPO Japan, Nagoya City Arts Museum -- 2005 S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent (EA) – Involution, Centre d’art contempoarin, Bretigny -- 2004 Roof Garden, Rathaus Vienna (permanent) -- Brandt’s Klaedefabrik, Odense, DK (EA) – Hortus and Botany, Liverpool Biennial -- 2003 Kunstverein Hannover (EA) -- Villa Merkel, Esslingen (EA) -- Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (EA) – 2002 Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (EA) - - Unexpected selection, The Art Museum Miami -- Uncommon Denominator, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art -- Bonner Kunstverein (EA) -- Garden, Landesmuseum Lower Austria, Government Sector, St. Pölten (permanent) 2001 Locus/Focus, Sonsbeek 9, Arnhem – Skulptur-Biennale Münsterland -- 2000 Museum Moderner Kunst 20er Haus Vienna (EA) -- Freud Museum, London (EA) -- Spacex Gallery, Exeter, UK (EA) -- Zeitwenden, Kunstmuseum Bonn; Museum Moderner Kunst Wien -- Camden Arts Centre, London (EA) – 1999 HIRIYA-DUMP, Tel Aviv Museum of Art -- Wild Cube, University for Social and Economic Science, Innsbruck (permanent) – Watari-Um, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (EA) – 1997 documenta X, Kassel -- 1996 Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (EA) – 1995 Vienna Secession (EA) – 1992 Kunstverein Salzburg (EA) -- 1991 21. Sao Paulo Biennial – 1986 De Skulptura, Wiener Festwochen, Messepalast, Vienna 1983 Galerie Krinzinger, Innsbruck (EA) -- Galerie nächst St. Stephan Vienna (EA)