23 Apr 2012

Grazer Kunstverein presents Tanja Widmann: eine von euch

Tanja Widmann's work emerges from an interest in the potential of language and its role in the performative construction of subjectivity. Drawing on historical concepts of video-based performance, she analyses technologies of reproduction, memory and repetition situating the (camera)apparatus as a recording, affective and interpretational machine. In Widmann's works, language shows itself in its conventionality as a rule-governed system, but surfaces at the same time as a fundamentally ambivalent and open structure through its ruptures and fissures. While the subject acts – speaks – for and before the camera, it turns into an empty signifier in constant flux between competence and incompetence, identification and distancing, sense and nonsense, finding itself in a permanent transition between action and reaction. In Widmann's installations, these video performances are arranged as a speculative constellation creating a network of actions, objects and documents that are relating to and reflecting each other.

For her solo exhibition at Grazer Kunstverein, Tanja Widmann is developing a new large-scale installation entitled eine von euch [one of you]. The starting point of the piece is provided by the script of a psycho-analytical session between Felix Guattari and his patient R.A., in which the recording equipment itself takes on a central role. Via this basic configuration of 'knowing' and 'unknowing' subjects and the concurrent ways of medialisation, Widmann brings together such seemingly diverse elements as psychoanalysis, primatology, an H&M collection as well as embroidery and macramé works in a speculative constellation that explores gender- and media-related questions of identity construction within the performative dynamics of social groups.

Set-up: Johannes Porsch
Embroideries: Tonio Kröner
Tanja Widmann (*1966 in Villach, Austria) lives and works in Vienna. She is an artist, author, curator and lecturer at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Numerous performances, exhibitions and contributions to exhibitions, most recently including Generali Foundation, Vienna (2011), Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010), Augarten Contemporary (2009) and kunstraum lakeside, Klagenfurt (2009). The exhibition Tanja Widmann: eine von euch is co-produced with Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe and tranzitdisplay, Prague.

Events
Performance by Tanja Widmann
Friday May 4th 2012, 8pm
Artist's talk with Tanja Widmann
Tuesday, May 29th 2012, 7pm

CMRK
is a network of four independent not-for-profit institutions for contemporary art based in Graz: Camera Austria, Kunstverein Medienturm, rotor, and Grazer Kunstverein. On the evening of Friday 20 April 2012 all four institutions open their new exhibitions at 6pm:
Camera Austria: Margherita Spiluttini: und dann (reframing architecture) Kunstverein Medienturm: Nicole Six and Paul Petritsch: View may be denied by cargo rotor: ELSEWHERE: Christoph Grill, Anna Jermolaewa, Mahony, Micha Payer + Martin Gabriel, Isa Riedl, Jun Yang

Exhibitions in dialogue
Curator's tours through all four CMRK exhibitions with Anton Lederer on Wednesday, 16th May at 3pm and Sandro Droschl on Friday, 1st of June at 3pm, both starting at Grazer Kunstverein.