APPROPRIATION Part II: Re-enactment – Recontextualization
from 04.09.2012 to 29.09.2012 Opening: Monday, 3 September, 7 p.m. Introductory talk: Petra Noll Accompanying program: Work presentation and screening – G.R.A.M (A): Thuesday, 13 September 2012, 7 p.m.
Gerda Lampalzer, Rita Nowak, Sissa Micheli, G.R.A.M, Benjamin Tomasi, Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien Projekt Tableau Vivant, Bernhard Garnicnig, Christopher Richmond
Because of the current noticeable affinity towards the use and recontextualization of found material in the work of many artists active in international art discourse the curatorial team of the FOTOGALERIE WIEN, together with art historian and curator Petra Noll, has developed APPROPRIATION as the special focus for this year. The conceptual basis is provided by the Appropriation Art of the 1970s and 1980s in which artists conceptually appropriated pre-existing art works. The tripartite series of exhibitions takes the subject a little further and presents photo and video artists who are involved with found footage material from very different contexts or employ strategies of re-enactment in order to open up new perspectives and pictorial realities. Over and above the central themes of Appropriation Art – authorship and originality – the concern here is with issues of representation and perception, with the politics of social and cultural confrontations as well as with history, memory and identity. In the context of APPROPRIATION the mediums of photography and film which, per se, point in the direction of the past, offer an additional level for reflection.
The second exhibition in the series dealing with APPROPRIATION is presenting art projects based on the strategy of re-enactment. The artists represented in the show transcend the traditional concept of re-enacting stagings that already exist – e.g. in historical paintings/Tableaux Vivants – as authentically as possible. They appropriate their material from the visual arts but also, for example, from