Galerie im Taxispalais

ANONYMOUS SCULPTURES

Video and Form in Contemporary Art

Artists
Nathalie Djurberg, Matias Faldbakken, Zilla Leutenegger, Aernout Mik, Yves Netzhammer, Tony Oursler, Paul Pfeiffer, Tracey Snelling, Fiona Tan and Diana Thater

The Anonymous Sculptures. Video and form in contemporary art exhibition is showing ten international artists whose work addresses ephemeral video images and their sculptural presence in a space. Video and sculpture, which seem to be at opposite poles, engage with each other in room installations to create a complex aesthetic interplay between image and object. In terms of content, they focus on various socio-cultural tendencies in present-day society and the media-related, urban and ecological impact they make. This makes it possible to examine individual viewpoints and how these relate to an environment that has now become highly complex and shaped by a flood of pictorial information.

The Video-Skulptur. Retrospektiv und aktuell 1963-1989 (Video Sculpture. Retrospective and current 1963-1989) exhibition took place in the Kölner Kunstverein in 1989. This is the first appearance of “video sculpture” as a concept. This comprehensive show, presenting work by video pioneers Wolf Vostell and Nam June Paik among others, demonstrated both the current and the historical potential of video sculpture. The Galerie im Taxispalais exhibition takes this notion up again. It was scarcely relevant any more in the 1990s, as further development of technology now made large-scale projection in cinema formats possible. The fact that artists have recently gone back to the monitor format in combination with sculptural objects reflects the internet age’s need to re-anchor virtual pictorial worlds in reality and in the space where viewers are located.

The works, some site-specific and some formally closed, invite revision both of the history of video sculpture and of genre boundaries, and also reflection about the qualities and transparency of categories that are separate as such. The interplay of videographic and sculptural elements creates complex pictorial spaces that trigger contradictory experiences in the field of tension between technology, nature, society and the individual.