01 Jun 2009

Werner Reiterer at Nicolas Krupp Contemporary Art Gallery, Basel

WERNER REITERER

After the solo exhibitions in the Speed Art Museum, Louisville / Kentucky in 2008 and the Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa / Florida in 2009 Nicolas Krupp Contemporary Art Gallery is happy to announce a solo exhibition with new drawings and sculptures by Werner Reiterer in Basel.

Werner Reiterer doesn’t spare himself nor the viewer. He draws his remaining lifetime, 10 seconds after his death he let’s the light in his father’s eyes glow out of a metal bin, he displays a 172 cm high, white lacquered beam of wood as Adolf Hitler and a punching bag mutates into a banging bomb. And yet: he inevitably meets the fate of the chosen topics, shows that there is a joker interacting, who looks for the sensual encounter and demands a smile from every threat. Before the black monster, located in the middle of the room, goes off with a droning explosion, we prepared by punching with a playful aggression. Before we can identify the bright post as the true monument of the nazi-regime its short and dark head of hair provokes sympathy. A low hanging station- or school-clock appears to be a nostalgic object, before the irregularity of its amplified ticking reminds us of the relativity of it’s cognition of time. And when the distinguished in graduated grey developed drawing from always 70 by 50 cm size is the inspiration for the cartoon, the political or psychological depth-of-field can never escape a second look. With subtle actions, in the exemplary way the artist often leads, Reiterer lays a second foundation under this supposed routine. In the drawing lays the fundus, which at first, totally independent of its technical feasibility, makes the imaginable visible, and then sometimes becomes the foil for a spatial conversion.

Born in Graz, Reiterer studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1984 to 1988. He has been featured in major museum and gallery exhibitions throughout Europe and is recognized as one of the leading artists of his generation. Reiterer has completed numerous public art commissions in Europe and the United States. The artist lives and works in Vienna.

Isabel Zürcher