Waste Value Rising (Abfallwert steigend)
Kunsthaus Wien/ Garage, Vienna 14 July – 30 October 2016 Artists: Folke Köbberling/Martin Kaltwasser (D), Dan Peterman (USA), RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co, F/ CH), transparadiso (A) Curated by: Barbara Holub The exhibition Waste Value Rising (Abfallwert steigend) turns the Garage at KUNST HAUS WIEN into a “space for discussion” on art objects and their value or non-value. Four international artistic positions thematise the thin line between “value” and “non-value” and thus the contexts and mechanisms that determine or modify this line. Garages often serve as interim storages for things and passions whose future and use are uncertain; things one cannot (yet) do without or doesn’t want to get rid of. In this sense a garage is a place where the line between current and potential value, between “art object” and “waste” is blurred. At the same time the value of artistic work is subject to dramatic fluctuation, it varies depending on the context. The loss of value and the categorisation as “waste” are thus permanent threats. The exhibition presents artistic positions at the interface of art, ecology and economy and points to the material effects of the cycle of consumption, waste, disposal, recycling on our social and natural environment. Video: www.wien.gv.at/video/1083/Abfallwert-steigend |
Events Workshops Dan Peterman/Mobile Models Thursday, 14 07 2016, 3 - 6 p.m. transparadiso for Dan Petermans Mobile Models: Friday, 26 08 2016, 3 - 6 p.m. Friday, 23 09 2016, 3 - 6 p.m. Talk Saturday, 24 09 2016, 7 p.m. Dan Peterman and Barbara Holub |
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exhibition views and photos of the workshops by Dan Peterman and the growing "Mobile Models" |
The exhibition Abfallwert steigend (waste value rising) turns the Garage at KUNST HAUS WIEN into a “space for discussion” on art objects and the value of labour, thereby placing the narrow borderline between value and non-value, loss and increase of value in the context of current social issues. Garages often serve as interim storages for things and passions whose future and use are uncertain; things one cannot (yet) do without or doesn’t want to get rid of. In this sense a garage is a place where the line between current and potential value, between “art object” and “waste” is blurred. The value of labour is subject to drastic fluctuation, is determined variously in different contexts and is latently subject to loss of value and the categorisation as “waste”. The exhibition presents international artistic positions at the interface of art, ecology and economy and points to the material effects of the cycle of consumption, waste, disposal, recycling on our social and natural environment. In its artistic and urbanistic projects, transparadiso (Austria) frequently deals with the aspect of the “reassessment” of existing materials and their underestimated potentials. The object neuwertig (2016) created for this exhibition places terms signifying value on a disused rear car window, using letters from discarded computer keyboards; in the installation, the rear window points to a kind of control panel. The term neuwertig (“in mint condition”) is a subjective description of the state of second-hand objects; by way of the installation neuwertig, it addresses the complexity of current debates on social values and possible actions. The installation White Trash no5 (2008-2016) by Folke Köbberling/Martin Kaltwasser (Germany) is an Audi Q7 constructed of waste wood and putty. Divided into its part it will make its last appearance at KUNST HAUS WIEN’s Garage. Having been displayed in various exhibitions (documented here by posters), this may be the last “mounting” of the sculpture before its disposal. While sculptures are marked by their potential value for collectors in the context of exhibitions, especially larger objects and installations often quickly turn into ballast after the exhibition’s end, since storing them requires special resources in terms of space and finances. The artists’ work is characterised by natural decomposition or the calculated destruction of the sculptures they created painstakingly by hand – the deconstruction of sculpture. The artist duo RELAX (Switzerland/France) is represented in the exhibition by human resources / human resources (2016). The work, which takes the shape of two posters mounted in the inner courtyard of KUNST HAUS WIEN, takes on “the widely and uncritically accepted word combination of human beings and resources, expressing usability”. Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza and Daniel Hauser, who form RELAX together with rotating cooperation partners, deal with questions of values and valorisation in their artistic work. In his installation projects, Dan Peterman (USA ) works at the interface of art, ecology and economy. By processing recycled materials further, he raises questions regarding the social function of art; he founded the “experimental station” on Chicago’s socially disadvantaged South Side. For the exhibition, Peterman installed a workshop inside the container where he builds Mobile Models (bicycle joints and bamboo) (2016): the materials, locally harvested bamboo and discarded bicycle frames – a plant and a machine – represent ecologically complex interactions in a world increasingly destabilized by human intervention. Out of this workshop come intuitive, diagrammatic, rhizomatic, constructivist models that tumble into complexity while remaining tethered to simple material and ecological equations. They are familiar fragments becoming a network and a balance of artificial interventions within natural systems. Mobile Models - workshop, Sept.23, 2016
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