ÜBERLAGERUNG. SCHEISSE 2


Opening: September 11, 2003, 7 p.m.
Duration of exhibition: 09/12/2003 bis 10/25/2003

Press release

For the first time, the Kerstin Engholm Galerie will be presenting a solo exhibition featuring the work of the Swiss-born artist Markus Geiger (*1957) who presently lives in Vienna.

Since the 1980’s Marcus Geiger has been working within and around the context of art, studying it in aesthetic, architectural terms and exploring its political and economic connotations. He introduces everyday material and objects into this context, which is furnished both two- and three-dimensionally. The critical potential residing in the in-situ pieces, such as those created in 1992 and 1998 for the Secession or more recently for the “Hallo Bawag“ exhibition (2003), together with Peter Kogler, ultimately emerges through the very act of critique which drives the “trash king“ (Henriette Horny, 2003), ”devaluator “ (Thomas Trummer, 2001) or ”tailor and cabaret artiste “ (Jan Tabor, 1991) to ever new heights.

The familiar use of terry cloth which Geiger exhibited for the first time in 1998 at the Galerie Peter has meanwhile been used to transfer any number of imaginable objects – from the exhibition partition to the coffee saucer. In attempt to redefine value, Geiger’s approach is geared to the aesthetization of very ordinary and mass-manufactured, which has been a subject of debate in art ever since the first appearance of the readymade. Geiger’s intent is not so much to attack the “wrong” steps that ideas extending into life and derived from life have taken in art. Instead, he is more interested in a subtle representation of the enhanced value of the object through art and, closely intertwined with this, the authorities accompanying this process from the beginning.

With his “Überlagerung. Scheisse 2“ (Overlapping. Shit 2) Geiger will make a subtle intervention in the gallery lighting and reflect on both its institutional function and its artistic meaning. Focusing on the infrastructure of the gallery in particular, the artist will also stage a dialogue between two rooms that will address the difference between business-related privacy and the public consumption of art.

I’ll show you a difference, as one can hear Hamlet saying. It will be exciting to see what soft traces will show up on the turf of art.