Life is full of injustices, and art is not fair either. Elke Krystufek
registers this regrettable fact with peculiar calm. Unmoved, she goes about
demonstrating how social contrasts and economic polarities put some life
into our senses.
The impulse for the exhibition The Rich Visit the Poor, the Poor Visit the
Rich - Part 2 came from the artist book of the same name which Krystufek
produced for the BAWAG FOUNDATION EDITION. With this publication, the
compulsive self-observer averted her gaze from her mirror image. Today`s
protagonists are the usual suspects featuring in her bio/biblio and being
part of her "my life is my artwork" deal.
Artists, gallery owners,
collectors, curators - Krystufek falls back on the entire art scene yakuza,
making them appear against a backdrop of slums and palaces, in chic salons
and trashy saloons, in pink Cadillacs, designer chairs, and high-grade
steel bathtubs, on garbage dumps, in supermarkets, and in front of graffiti
walls.
The 115 collages - a technique Krystufek masters brilliantly - span a very
witty frame of reference encompassing photographs, drawings, magazine
cut-outs, and text. The artist provides a detailed bundle of visual chain
reactions concerning the subjects power and society, poverty and wealth,
art`s impact and futility. The cultural meaning of advertising merges with
manipulations of commercial private interests. Krystufek misses the
discrepancies between the norms and standards of capitalism and those of
minor and deviant groups with the emphasis of an artist familiar with the
influence pictures exercise on their recipients.
A disciplined system underlies the images that, at first sight, seem to be
jumbled together in an absolutely chaotic manner. Krystufek`s order is an
individual and selective order even if it supplies general standards for
analysis. One of her hypotheses runs as follows:
The basic material of all (life) experience is art. Olafur Eliassons
"Weather Project" in the Tate Modern, a poured painting by Hermann Nitsch,
a foil work by Gerwald Rockenschaub, pictures by Maria Lassnig, photographs
by Valie Export; performing artists in action: Katrina Daschner as a
vampire, Uros Djuric in a football dress, Krystufek herself as a black
knight in "Two Blacks don`t make a White" 2001 in the Generali Foundation;
Mark Dion among reeds, Andrea Fraser as a Brazilian carnival dancer, Vito
Acconci in a Gerhard Merz exhibition, Elizabeth Peyton in a T-Shirt
sporting the word "run" as one of innumerable allusions.
If the characters of the plot are concrete (the material used comes from
Krystufek`s unfathomable hoard of photographs), the context in which they
appear is pure fabrication. Yet, it would not be Elke Krystufek if the
"similarities" were accidental. The everyday magazine market provides her
with her protagonists` environments which range from art journals, glossy
design and architecture publications to the advertising pages of fashion
journals and - a highlight of cynicism - Benetton`s self-marketing sheet
"Colors," where the grossest visual shockers come from.
Meet architect Zaha Hadid standing in front of a brilliantly assembled
shack she must be envious of, framed posh gallery owner Thaddäus Ropac
sitting in a frame, collector Anton Schmölzer standing with a reflex camera
in a rubbish heap of a Barrackopolis slum, art dealer Lisa Spellman who has
just blown up her car and is leaving the danger zone with nothing on her
feet. The artist`s insinuations are equally extreme, merciless, and witty:
Maria Lassnig and Boris Grois love Silhouette glasses, Franz West and
Edelbert Köb prefer a wet shave, Maureen Paley is a Cherokee, Georg Kargl
swears by power naps in Joe Colombo`s lounge chairs, Christoph Becker has
snitched a Hodler picture and tries to hide it in an old clothes container,
Candice Breitz uses Clinique lipsticks matching the blood-covered Satyricon
lead singer`s color.
Krystufek meticulously lists the sources of her material in the index of
her book. This is also where the complexity of the book`s text reveals
itself to all eager basic research beavers: all collages are full to the
brim with texts by the artist, with quotations, fragmented passages from
art theory and philosophy, smart sayings and banal advertising slogans. The
selection is precisely aimed at reinforcing Krystufek`s arguments. Paul
Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer pillory genetic selection as a new form of
racism in "Crepuscular Dawn," Jimmie Durham, whom Krystufek holds in high
esteem as an artist and activist, asks himself why conformist art is always
the most successful in "A Certain Lack of Coherence," and Luce Irigaray
states in "The Way of Love" that it is the difference between people that
makes us sensitive to a new era of global intercommunication.
Krystufek uses the reference texts as content nodes which, in the dynamic
tumult of the pictures, stand for the attitudes important to her on the one
hand and hint at paradoxes annoying her on the other: the fictions created
by the magazine market, the absurdity of advertising as a
picture-generating medium anticipating the recipients` position, the
ambivalent attitude towards "political art" which sees social Utopias
destroyed by nobody else but the insiders of the art scene, art without
fissures, irresponsible representation in an era in which the radical chic
of a subversive outfit is always more important than any critical strategy.
The transformation of an exhibition into a book format is common practice.
Elke Krystufek tries to go the opposite way for the BAWAG FOUNDATION. She
couples the conventions of exhibitions with empirical analysis and
interpretation and relates the presentation in space to collecting and
archival procedures. Krystufek`s strategy aims at revealing contexts, at
making processes understandable that turn an unsorted accumulation of
materials into a structured, definitely composed, and logical (printed)
work: researching and documenting, classifying and deciding, filing and
dismissing, searching and finding.
This is why the showcases contain the literature used, as well as magazines
and newspapers as her basic materials. Krystufek picks up her scissors and
cuts out what she needs for her collages in a comfortingly analogous
manner, sticking one part on top of the other in an deliberate, linkage of
high and low, claim and trash beyond any hierarchy. And the thing that
presents itself as a rather cool coffee table book is actually the
manifestation of an honest and effective activity that is to create
knowledge, an attempt at depicting theory, an experiment evaluating the
ideologies prevailing in the art world and their social substance.
First of all, 30 large photographic compositions based on the printer`s
copies for the book connect the book and the exhibition.
The video "Same Time, Next Year" serves as an additional link. The global
hierarchy of power is confronted with private hierarchies of power. Elke
Krystufek plays both parts of the two-person drama "Same Time, Next Year"
by Bernard Slade, which was a big success on Broadway in the 1970s. The
comedy describes the effects of an affair lasting for 26 years on the
couple that meets in a hotel once a year. Both in the play and in
Krystufek`s reproduction, the time factor is of crucial importance. The
protagonists go through various economic phases, from social advancements
to collapses of their careers against the background of the hippie movement
and the Vietnam War. In the video, the consecutive development is suspended
by means of time and space scissors which resulted from the long production
time at various locations.
Elke Krystufek has always dealt with classic sex and gender differences
with nonchalant irony. The dimension of the body is a subject not entirely
left out in this exhibition.
Related Links:
Quick Arts
Access:
Vienna (99)