Alfons Egger
25 Feb - 15 May 2011
ALFONS EGGER
February 25 – May 15, 2011 (Opening: Thursday, February 24, 2011)
Drawings between Dadaism and concrete poetry, transgressive performances, and interventions aiming to create a sense of community—these elements are constants in Alfons Egger's oeuvre, as are suggestive dream-images and fictional characters. At a time when the performative potential of the stage is once again gaining ground in spaces dedicated to the visual arts, his is an early position that has positively been waiting to articulate itself afresh. Alfons Egger's work is distinguished by its high degree of complexity and the dense use of media. Since the early 1970s, the artist has worked with fragments from everyday life, which he interweaves with elements of his own biography to create a system of references that challenges the beholder in forever new ways—an effect to which the openness of his work to various interpretations contributes as well. Creating oversized letters out of foamed plastic, he installs formulae such as NUR SCHAUEN (JUST LOOK, 2006) in various spatial situations: be it in a department store about to undergo renovation, where the work suggests the idea of a restriction on consumerism; be it in a booth at an art fair, where the string of letters aims at questions immanent to art about the perception of images. For the exhibition in the Secession's Grafisches Kabinett, Alfons Egger is developing a space-specific installation, confronting beholders with an ephemeral verbal donation that, on a conscious as well as an unconscious level, once again underlines the state of subtle suspension characteristic of his creative production.
Alfons Egger, b. Haiming (AT) 1952, lives and works in Vienna.
February 25 – May 15, 2011 (Opening: Thursday, February 24, 2011)
Drawings between Dadaism and concrete poetry, transgressive performances, and interventions aiming to create a sense of community—these elements are constants in Alfons Egger's oeuvre, as are suggestive dream-images and fictional characters. At a time when the performative potential of the stage is once again gaining ground in spaces dedicated to the visual arts, his is an early position that has positively been waiting to articulate itself afresh. Alfons Egger's work is distinguished by its high degree of complexity and the dense use of media. Since the early 1970s, the artist has worked with fragments from everyday life, which he interweaves with elements of his own biography to create a system of references that challenges the beholder in forever new ways—an effect to which the openness of his work to various interpretations contributes as well. Creating oversized letters out of foamed plastic, he installs formulae such as NUR SCHAUEN (JUST LOOK, 2006) in various spatial situations: be it in a department store about to undergo renovation, where the work suggests the idea of a restriction on consumerism; be it in a booth at an art fair, where the string of letters aims at questions immanent to art about the perception of images. For the exhibition in the Secession's Grafisches Kabinett, Alfons Egger is developing a space-specific installation, confronting beholders with an ephemeral verbal donation that, on a conscious as well as an unconscious level, once again underlines the state of subtle suspension characteristic of his creative production.
Alfons Egger, b. Haiming (AT) 1952, lives and works in Vienna.