Josef Strau
24 Apr - 21 Jun 2015
JOSEF STRAU
24 April – 21 June 2015
Curator: Annette Südbeck
Josef Strau’s experimental artistic practice is anchored in the written word. In his installations, he contrasts fairly restrained architectural structures with often large quantities of text. Recurring formats for his linkages between text and object are pamphlets on lamps from flea markets, illuminated manuscripts, and printed and handwritten texts on posters and canvases. The texts themselves are marked by a typographical play with text and gaps as well as by Strau's specific style of writing, which nimbly and playfully tracks his stream of consciousness. Oscillating between the important and the unimportant, he interweaves everyday stories of urban scenes with intimate revelations and literary motifs.
Strau says about his exhibition at the Secession: “It is another exercise in extemporaneous production. The show will contain four exhibitions, although each one of them will not appear executed in the form of its still fictional completeness. They will appear as if abruptly abandoned in mid-production, either by consequence of an interrupted process, or somehow metaphorically, as if the artist had disappeared at one moment during the intense preparation period before his institutional one-person show. This gives rise to a ‘romantic’ mode of interruption, or also of the compositional form of aleatoric deletions, or rather, a work with such musical or text motives rather than with themes, that determines the form for all the other parts of production presented in the exhibition.”
Josef Strau is known for his shifting roles as gallerist, curator, writer, musician, and artist. He has written not only in most of his art productions, but also for numerous publications, catalogues, and magazines. His recent solo shows have been on display at the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2014), the Liverpool Biennale (2014), House of Gaga, Mexico City (2013, 2010) and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York (2012).
The artist's book Josef Strau. Turtle Dreaming will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.
Josef Strau, born in Vienna in 1957, lives in New York.
Invited by the board of the Secession
With the generous support of Arbeiterkammer Wien.
24 April – 21 June 2015
Curator: Annette Südbeck
Josef Strau’s experimental artistic practice is anchored in the written word. In his installations, he contrasts fairly restrained architectural structures with often large quantities of text. Recurring formats for his linkages between text and object are pamphlets on lamps from flea markets, illuminated manuscripts, and printed and handwritten texts on posters and canvases. The texts themselves are marked by a typographical play with text and gaps as well as by Strau's specific style of writing, which nimbly and playfully tracks his stream of consciousness. Oscillating between the important and the unimportant, he interweaves everyday stories of urban scenes with intimate revelations and literary motifs.
Strau says about his exhibition at the Secession: “It is another exercise in extemporaneous production. The show will contain four exhibitions, although each one of them will not appear executed in the form of its still fictional completeness. They will appear as if abruptly abandoned in mid-production, either by consequence of an interrupted process, or somehow metaphorically, as if the artist had disappeared at one moment during the intense preparation period before his institutional one-person show. This gives rise to a ‘romantic’ mode of interruption, or also of the compositional form of aleatoric deletions, or rather, a work with such musical or text motives rather than with themes, that determines the form for all the other parts of production presented in the exhibition.”
Josef Strau is known for his shifting roles as gallerist, curator, writer, musician, and artist. He has written not only in most of his art productions, but also for numerous publications, catalogues, and magazines. His recent solo shows have been on display at the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2014), the Liverpool Biennale (2014), House of Gaga, Mexico City (2013, 2010) and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York (2012).
The artist's book Josef Strau. Turtle Dreaming will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.
Josef Strau, born in Vienna in 1957, lives in New York.
Invited by the board of the Secession
With the generous support of Arbeiterkammer Wien.