Markus Schinwald
05 Apr - 05 May 2012
MARKUS SCHINWALD
5 April – 5 May, 2012
Yvon Lambert is pleased to announce Austrian artist Markus Schinwalds first solo exhibition in Paris.
The exhibition will take place at the Yvon Lambert gallery from the 5th of April to the 5th of May 2012.
Markus Schinwald (born in 1973, lives and works in Vienna) shows a vivid interest in the psychological analysis of space, in the body, in the strangeness and the discomfort, as well as in the irrational depth of our individual and collective existence. Through inconstant and shifting works (videos, photographs, puppets, installations, paintings and drawings), strongly influenced by the show, dance, performance, or even opera and fashion scene, he stages manipulated - or through physical extents, mechanical prosthesis, accessories and strange clothing - elongated bodies. His works can seem like minimalistic productions at first sight, but reveal themselves as a complex structure, open to a profusion of possibilities and stories that nourish themselves from our collective memory. Markus Schinwald develops scenarios that do not follow a proper story, with a beginning and an end. He takes the spectator in an independent and self-ruling world, sometimes disturbing, obsessive, and surrealistic.
Stirring art history’s myths, psychoanalytic themes and cultural theories, the artist denies all forms of naturalism; his works are a collection of curiosities that develop an uncommon view of the human being, with a high aesthetic load.
He represented the Austrian pavilion at the last Venice Biennale, with an installation that precisely refers to the existing space. Inside the pavilion: a narrow, labyrinthine, stifling corridor where Schinwald shows some altered paintings in the manner of 17th century Dutch paintings, sculptures made of table pieces and “Orient”, an astounding, obsessive film where a dancing actor tries to take his trapped foot out of a crack in a wall.
In the cohesion of his project at the Venice Biennale, Markus Schinwald presents today a new installation at the Yvon Lambert gallery, where he plays yet again with the representation and the manipulation of space, time, light and shadow, where he also causes trouble when amusing himself with the concept of “visible” and “hidden”.
The enormous white wall blocking the gallery space reveals itself to the spectator as a gigantic three-dimensional block, a truly statuesque object. With evident radicalism, placed in the middle of the space, this parallelepiped shows on long narrow corridors between the gallery walls and itself. Along these impassable corridors, some of the artist’s canvases are hanging, but only a few remain clearly visible.
Theses canvases are part of a master portrait series of the 19th century the artist found, and that he altered by intervening on the faces, adding masks, prostheses on the mouth, on the eyes or even on some part of the face, without it seeming to alter the characters identity. A speech that is somehow hampered sometimes comes out of it, as if the hero of the picture was impeded by the hypocrisy and the insincerity of his condition. The artist raises the question of the body and its interaction with space, whilst challenging conventions and identity.
In the center of this more statuesque than architectural objet, a slot divides the block in two distinct parts, where with some perspective, one can observe a large and elegantly shaped sculpture, that looks like it is stuck between the two walls.
Through the mysterious and impassable aspect erected by the sculptural block, its cracks, its full emptiness, its visible then hidden parts, Markus Schinwald offers here a very personal vision of the unfathomable.
5 April – 5 May, 2012
Yvon Lambert is pleased to announce Austrian artist Markus Schinwalds first solo exhibition in Paris.
The exhibition will take place at the Yvon Lambert gallery from the 5th of April to the 5th of May 2012.
Markus Schinwald (born in 1973, lives and works in Vienna) shows a vivid interest in the psychological analysis of space, in the body, in the strangeness and the discomfort, as well as in the irrational depth of our individual and collective existence. Through inconstant and shifting works (videos, photographs, puppets, installations, paintings and drawings), strongly influenced by the show, dance, performance, or even opera and fashion scene, he stages manipulated - or through physical extents, mechanical prosthesis, accessories and strange clothing - elongated bodies. His works can seem like minimalistic productions at first sight, but reveal themselves as a complex structure, open to a profusion of possibilities and stories that nourish themselves from our collective memory. Markus Schinwald develops scenarios that do not follow a proper story, with a beginning and an end. He takes the spectator in an independent and self-ruling world, sometimes disturbing, obsessive, and surrealistic.
Stirring art history’s myths, psychoanalytic themes and cultural theories, the artist denies all forms of naturalism; his works are a collection of curiosities that develop an uncommon view of the human being, with a high aesthetic load.
He represented the Austrian pavilion at the last Venice Biennale, with an installation that precisely refers to the existing space. Inside the pavilion: a narrow, labyrinthine, stifling corridor where Schinwald shows some altered paintings in the manner of 17th century Dutch paintings, sculptures made of table pieces and “Orient”, an astounding, obsessive film where a dancing actor tries to take his trapped foot out of a crack in a wall.
In the cohesion of his project at the Venice Biennale, Markus Schinwald presents today a new installation at the Yvon Lambert gallery, where he plays yet again with the representation and the manipulation of space, time, light and shadow, where he also causes trouble when amusing himself with the concept of “visible” and “hidden”.
The enormous white wall blocking the gallery space reveals itself to the spectator as a gigantic three-dimensional block, a truly statuesque object. With evident radicalism, placed in the middle of the space, this parallelepiped shows on long narrow corridors between the gallery walls and itself. Along these impassable corridors, some of the artist’s canvases are hanging, but only a few remain clearly visible.
Theses canvases are part of a master portrait series of the 19th century the artist found, and that he altered by intervening on the faces, adding masks, prostheses on the mouth, on the eyes or even on some part of the face, without it seeming to alter the characters identity. A speech that is somehow hampered sometimes comes out of it, as if the hero of the picture was impeded by the hypocrisy and the insincerity of his condition. The artist raises the question of the body and its interaction with space, whilst challenging conventions and identity.
In the center of this more statuesque than architectural objet, a slot divides the block in two distinct parts, where with some perspective, one can observe a large and elegantly shaped sculpture, that looks like it is stuck between the two walls.
Through the mysterious and impassable aspect erected by the sculptural block, its cracks, its full emptiness, its visible then hidden parts, Markus Schinwald offers here a very personal vision of the unfathomable.