19 July 2019

‘Books and Papers II’ at Christine König Galerie

Philip Loersch, Universal Library and Searching Mary , 2018 Pencil, ink, varnish on soapstone 32 x 32 x 12 cm and 45 x 23 x 12 cm Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna and the artist © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
‘Books and Papers II’ at Christine König Galerie
Philip Loersch, Universal Library and Searching Mary , 2018 Pencil, ink, varnish on soapstone 32 x 32 x 12 cm and 45 x 23 x 12 cm Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna and the artist © Photo: Philipp Friedrich

For visual artists the book has always been an object of fascination. Whether as a receptacle that encloses the content, as an object beyond word and meaning, as a hermetic medium that can be deconstructed with artistic means, or as a background for images, that can be covered with ornamental letters and figurations. The allegedly fundamental contradiction between image and text -the one, an aesthetic configuration that can be apprehended and deciphered at a glance, the other, a narrative structure that must be sequentially decoded in order to demonstrate its qualities -is at the same time a driving force in the reciprocal fertilisation of the two artistic means of expression. Under the influence of the book / of book culture, art can develop a narrative dimension, and the set of texts, under the spell of pictorial representative forms, can develop an aesthetic dimension that perhaps tells a completely different story than the letters that mightbe hidden / concealed in it.

Exhibition view BOOKS + PAPERS II , Christine König Galerie, Vienna 2019 © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Exhibition view BOOKS + PAPERS II , Christine König Galerie, Vienna 2019 © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Exhibition view BOOKS + PAPERS II , Christine König Galerie, Vienna 2019 © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Exhibition view BOOKS + PAPERS II , Christine König Galerie, Vienna 2019 © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Gerhard Rühm, Leseinseln, 2011 Newspaper collage, punched out black carton on „Welt Kompakt“ newspaper(28,8 x 41,5) onwhite cartoneach 70 x 50 cm, framed4 partssigned, dated, numbered and titled on the frontCourtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna and the artist © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Greta Schödl, Untitled, 1970. Pieces of dried leaves, rice paper, ink, watercolour and gold leaf on old book pages dimensions variable, framed recto signed Courtesy Christi ne König Galerie, Vienna and the artist © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Thilo Jenssen, Untitled (from the series Melancholia ), 2013/14. Albrecht Dürer oeuvre catalogues, laser cut dimensions variable, series of 5 works Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna and the artist © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Jeff McMillan, Biblio (T&D - L), Biblio (Ger), Biblio (RS) Black, Biblio (DF) White, Biblio (Lovis - L , 2016 - 2019 ink on khadi or ric e paper dimensions variable Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna and the artist © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Humphrey Ocean, Untitled, 2006. Gouache on damask napkin dimensions variable Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna and the artist © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Exhibition view BOOKS + PAPERS II , Christine König Galerie, Vienna 2019 © Photo: Philipp Friedrich

Books and Papers II continues an exhibition from the year 2015, and, with a different list of artists, reveals new facets in the relationship between text and image, or, if one wishes to express it in structuralist terms, between signifier and signified: the spectrum reaches from works in the tradition of concrete poetry up to works in the style of illumination, which radiate the magic of the archaic. Then there are artefacts which, using graphic means, address the role of photography as an instrument of documentation, and classic oil-on-canvas painting, which captures the burden and the pleasure of bibliophily.

Maruša Sagadin, Untitled, 2019. Drawings, painted over posters, prints, tape 3,50 x 3,10 m Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna and the artist © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Pierre Bismuth, Origami boxes: one thing made of another, one thing used as another (Claude Monet, Gilbert & George, Wassilij Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt, Che Guevara), 2004. Folded poster dimensions variable Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna and the artist © Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Philip Loersch, Universal Library and Searching Mary, 2018. Pencil, ink, varnish on soapstone 32 x 32 x 12 cm and 45 x 23 x 12 cm Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Vienna and the artist © Photo: Philipp Friedrich

Books and Papers: in this field of tension, a dialectic of the apprehension of the world and, at the same time, the forlornness of the world is played out: the aesthetic appropriation of the meaningful artefact plays on diverse keyboards, which engender a visual polyphony with occasional dissonances. Books and Papers II combines irony and rigorous conceptualism, classical transcendence and anacreontic play, sublime exaltation and then in turn grotesque disintegration of form. In the thoroughly adversarial interaction and also in the aesthetic contradiction, in the actuation of different cerebral areas, and in the meaningless marvelling and quivering, without comprehension, the potentialities of existential teleologies unfold, aiming at the absolute, and in missing the mark surveying the frontiers of the human. “Reading means dreaming by means of foreign hands”, the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa once wrote. One could also invert the phrasing: to dream in the contemplation of art, means reading by means of foreign hands.

Thomas Miessgang

Imprint

ArtistSepp Auer, Pierre Bismuth, Andreas Duscha, Per Dybvig, Heinz Gappmayr, Thomas Hartmann, Peter Hauenschild, Thilo Jenssen, Philip Loersch, Jeff Mcmillan, Humphrey Ocean, Dan Perjovschi, Tudor Patraşcu, Tex Rubinowitz, Gerhard Rühm, Maruša Sagadin, Greta Schödl, Margherita, Spilut Tini, Mircea Stanescu
ExhibitionBooks and Papers II
Place / venueChristine König Galerie, Vienna
Dates28 June – 27 July 2019
Websitewww.christinekoeniggalerie.com
Index

See also