Galerie im Taxispalais

Hans Weigand

Panorama

Hans Weigand’s exhibition "Panorama" is a cooperative project between Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum and Galerie im Taxispalais. It presents a comprehensive selection of works by this internationally renowned Tyrolean artist. The exhibition title refers to one of his latest works; it was developed in the style of historiographic and popular cultural cycloramas of the 19th century and is at the centre of the presentation at Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum. Just over 100 years after the historic “Bergisel Panorama” was set up in its present building near the Kettenbrücke bridge in Innsbruck, and immediately before it was supposed to be transferred to Bergisel, Hans Weigand took up the idea of a cyclorama, released it from its mythological codes, redefined it, and transferred it into our multi-perspective, digitally influenced present-day world. With its oval shape and circumference of 30 metres, it encloses the viewer like the setting of a stage on which he is quickly led from historical to current war scenarios, from architecture visions through consumer waste to pastoral landscapes, and from demolition debris dumps to lifestyle surroundings at the pace of a collage.
In this work, photography and painting enter into a symbiosis that is characteristic of Weigand’s approach.
Apart from the style of painting, the interactive part of the “Panorama” also plays an important role. The surface of the “Panorama” is displayed on a flat screen, so the viewer can surf it, find crucial scenes, and discover what is hidden in the theme spaces behind them. In addition to the clips from various movies and videos selected by film theorist Alexandra Seibel, the artist has also included images and motifs from his own works.

Presenting early and recent works, a selective overview of the artist’s range is given at Galerie im Taxispalais. Ever since the 1970s, Hans Weigand has been using painting, drawing, computer graphics, videos, objects, and installations to develop a unique picture language in which he earnestly and ironically comments on our present-day world and interprets it. Influenced by his close ties to the Californian art scene and his affinity to underground music, his large-format pictures reflect themes from media and Pop Art culture. War, love, violence, mega cities, and the world of surfers merge to kaleidoscopic panoramas of our present-day world. One series of pictures centres on tremendously foaming, dark waves with tiny little surfers between them, hunting for kicks and enjoyment on the threshold of survival. Hans Weigand’s oeuvre displays an overkill of pictorial information, always oscillating between catastrophes and pastoral scenes, so the wave can be regarded as a leitmotif and symbol. The biographic video installation “Private View” is intricately convoluted through the insertion of movie and documentary clips, including “Das Jüngste Gericht” [“The Last Judgement”] by Hieronymus Bosch. Another complex of works is devoted to the project “Life/Boat” that was made in 1999, together with Raymond Pettibon and Jason Rhoades. His latest work, “Marching Army”, is formally related to the large “Panorama” at Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum; its protagonists – artist colleagues and friends of Weigand – are armed with electric guitars. The composition is presented in a cinemascopic, three-dimensional, round structure, is reflected by mirror foil on the floor, and can be looked at from a mobile auditorium.
High and low merge seamlessly in Hans Weigand’s oeuvre. The intertwining of various societal, cultural, and social levels of meaning is reflected by his images that take a collage approach and are based on a mixture of various image production techniques. Weigand thus playfully confronts gestural painting styles with hyper-realistic, photographic computer prints and interweaves references to classical works from art history with new media and popular aesthetics such as fantasy, psychedelic elements, and comics.

Moreover, the art project "7.44 x 2.60: screen" by Tiroler Landesmuseen in public space, in which several artists each present a video on an advertising space on the square in front of Innsbruck central station for several months, will feature Hans Weigand’s contribution until the end of February 2010. The 7.44 x 2.60 metres large surface is illuminated from the inside and shall prompt passers-by to pause and reflect on art. The aim is to position art in a place where people come and go and things are advertised and promoted: a hub of communication and presentation, a window to the city. After Erik Steinbrecher, Ernst Caramelle, Thomas Feuerstein, and Christine S. Prantauer, Weigand has developed a work specifically for this project, but following the “Panorama” at Ferdinandeum: within seconds, he catapults the viewer into an apocalyptic war scenario governed by beasts and scattered with monuments of the ‘Tyrolean Uprising’.

Hans Weigand was born in 1954 in Hall in Tyrol. He lives and works in Vienna, Berlin, and Absam near Innsbruck. From 1978 to 1983, he studied under Oswald Oberhuber at Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna. Ever since 1978, his works have continuously been presented at international solo and group exhibitions at galleries and renowned museums.

Selection:
1998 Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; 1999 MAK-Schindler House, Los Angeles; 2000 Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld; 2001 Gabriele Senn Galerie, Vienna; Secession, Vienna; 2002 Sammlung Hauser und Wirth, St. Gallen; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; 2003 Galerie Ascan Crone Andreas Osarek, Berlin; Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien; 2005 Gallery 500 and PICA – Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland/USA; Kunstraum Innsbruck; 2008 Museum der Moderne Salzburg; Malmö Konsthall; Arndt & Partner, Zurich; 2009 Kunsthaus Zug.