Markus Schinwald.
Exploring the thin boundary between the uncanny and the familiar, Markus Schinwald's multi-media works often collapse both theoretical notions into works bearing beauty and awkwardness, as well as fantasy and reality, in equal doses. For his new show at Augarten Contemporary in Vienna, Schinwald has created a narrative tour of his own recent career, creating an experiential continuum of the artificial present suggested in his works.
Schinwald (b. 1973, Salzburg, Austria, lives and works in Vienna) is renowned for works that meld the performative with the experimental - enshrouded, perhaps, in a veil of surreal mystery touching both his film's settings and interpreters. Some have seen his work as essentially being centred around the human body, questioning the body's constrictive cultural environment. It's hard not to see the body becoming the ultimate object of art through the montages on his elegantly manicured, almost sci-fi scenarios.
In 'Ten in Love', a 5 minute 35mm film from 2006, Schinwald gathers together into an cool and pristine old former school-convent a group of ten players bearing anatomic prostheses, moving and interacting as they approach an undisclosed ritual involving embracing and offering gifts to one another.
A soundtrack in the background visits time and time again a foreboding refrain: 'gestures mask intentions'. The players' gestures can seem primal, soulbaring and necessary, or robotically pre-programmed and superfluous, all at once, through Schinwald's theatrical mixture of elements. As for the intentions, they remain a blank to be filled by the viewer.
For his new show, the artist has chosen to present works that can be linked together into a wider narrative, and which also tie in to his presence at other exhibitions at the Belvedere/Augarten galleries from 2004-06. We get to see works that convey and emphasise Schinwald's interest in the experiential aspect of visual art - as the gallery notes puts it, this show 'is coagulated time woven into a visual mise en scene'.
Contemplating more of his theatrical characters (whether they be actors, puppets or hybrids) searching for meaning but apparently without a clue, viewers will rapidly enmesh themselves in Schinwald's world of muted, frustrated communication, failed by ordinary cultural methods, and discover its counter, a physical, performance-based acquiescence.
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez
Markus Schinwald
To 27 Jan 2008.
Augarten Contemporary
Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst des Belvedere Wien
Scherzergasse 1a
1020 Vienna
Austria
T: +43 (01) 79 557 0
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