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Opening Friday, 31 August 2007, 7 pm Introduction to the Project: Roland Schöny, Project Curator for Art in Public Space Vienna |
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| Six Posters On six large posters in the urban space of Innsbruck Maria Hahnenkamp shows a six-part photo sequence of a fragment of a recumbent female body in a red dress in different positions. Each of the six photos is overlaid with a different text in white letters, short sentences from Samuel Beckett's play Endgame*. The self-made dress of the model in the photo has a pattern that Hahnenkamp embroidered onto it herself, a floral form based on an ornament pattern from 1860, which the artist uses again and again in her works. It is white and, like the lettering, forms a stark contrast to the red of the fabric. The strangely abstracted from of these body fragments is due to the special conditions in which the model was photographed. The model was lying on a pane of glass and was photographed from below following the turn of the body around its own axis. The pressure of the weight of the body against the glass makes the body seem pictorially flat and the ornament loses its perfect form; the lines of the ornament are squashed, enclosing the body – of which neither head, arms or legs, nor beginning or end can be seen – like a net in which it seems to be caught. With the quotations from Beckett's Endgame Hahnenkamp picks up the performative gesture of the author, enigmatically and tragicomically enriching her own play with fragmentation and repetition, which has featured in her work from the beginning. Beckett's sentences seem cryptic, yet they pose concrete and very direct questions and demands to the viewers, setting their imagination in motion and yet leaving it dangling at the same time. Maria Hahnenkamp transfers Beckett's "apocalyptic atmosphere" to the here and now, conjoining the absurdly repetitive allusion with promises from advertising. "Advertising seeks to awaken desires to stimulate consumption. With this work I want to subvert conventional advertising messages and reflect on how the (female) body is deployed as a carrier of social inscriptions in the sociopolitical power play," says Hahnenkamp, whose works have revolved around the body since the earliest beginnings. At the same time, what has always interested her in her work, there is the question of how the (female) subject appears at the cost of the body and how this happens under the condition that the body is made to vanish. "The subject," says Hahnenkamp "not only actually takes the place of the body, but also acts as its soul, which frames and forms the body in captivity." * Samuel Beckett (1909 – 1989), Endspiel, Suhrkamp, 1974; Endgame was first published in 1957 in French, Fin de Partie, 1957 in Germany and in 1958 in English, Endgame. |
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| Locations Adamgasse 26 Ing.-Etzel-Straße, construction fence Bürgergarten Ing.-Etzel-Straße/Dreiheiligenstraße Landhausplatz, behind Taxispalais Pradlerstraße 19 Sterzinger Straße, Hotel am Busbahnhof / hotel at the main bus station  All locations can be reached within about a 15-minute walk from the Galerie im Taxispalais. Maps are available in the gallery. |
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| Discussion with the Artist Saturday, 1 September 2007, 12 noon Maria Hahnenkamp was born in 1959 in Eisenstadt. She lives and works in Vienna. 2007 Austrian Award of Recognition for Artistic Photography. Exhibitions: 2007 Galerie Krobath Wimmer, Vienna (solo exhibition), "Active Agents", Grazer Medienturm, Graz. "Einführung in die Kunstgeschichte", Ursula-Blickle-Stiftung, Kraichtal-Unteröwisheim, Germany. 2007 / 2006 "Erblätterte Identitäten – Mode, Kunst, Zeitschrift", Galerie der Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig / Stadthaus Ulm. 2006 "Why Pictures Now – Fotografie, Film, Video. Die neue Sammlung." MUMOK Vienna. 2006 / 2005 "Simultan – Zwei Sammlungen österreichischer Fotografie", Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland / Museum der Moderne Salzburg. 2005 Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris (E). 2002 "Transparency", Museum für angewandte Kunst / MAK-Galerie, Vienna (solo exhibition). |
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