24 Oct 2013

Josef Dabernig: Textual Photography, at tranzit.sk, Bratislava, 25.10. 2013

Josef Dabernig: Textual Photography

The exhibition comprising  a new selection from Josef Dabernig’s* ongoing Panorama photo-series and the film Lancia Thema (2005) aims to highlight trademark aspects of the artist’s oeuvre and propose new readings of the relationship between photography, film and space. As the first project of tranzit.sk’s new program, the exhibition is also meant to model a concentrated, yet multilayered merging of concept, methodology, structure, medium and contextual approach.

The 345 small-sized photographs displayed on tables, in a number of strands, are outcomes of Dabernig’s travels in Eastern and Southern Europe, Latin America, Northern Africa and East Asia. All of them are panoramic views of more-or-less empty spaces on the outskirts of big cities: stadiums, sports grounds and other spaces undergoing transformation. While the central void represents a kind of zero-degree level of releasing people’s imagination, peripheral traces of historic, social, economic and cultural changes provide data for possible scenarios about these places. Viewing / reading them one after the other may easily turn into a filmic or textual experience. In a complementary manner, photographs from the artist’s archive and the ritual of taking panoramas serve as constitutive elements of Lancia Thema.

The continuous shift of cross-references between the photographs in the table-top installation and the film projection overlap with the dialogue with the site of the exhibition. Concentrated and complex, the project points to the amalgamation of structuring and releasing, rationality, criticality, self-irony and humour, rigour and passion in Dabernig’s artistic practice.

* Josef Dabernig graduated in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1981. His sculptural discourse successively dissolved into different media such as photography, text and construction.
In 1996 he started to make short films, which were presented at festivals such as those in Locarno, Oberhausen, Rotterdam and Toronto. His film “Hypercrisis” was nominated for the European Film Awards at the Venice Film Festival in 2011. Recent exhibitions include: Josef Dabernig: 14 Films; MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Kraków (2013), FORMER WEST: Notes from Berlin; BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2013), Monday Begins on Saturday; Bergen Assembly, Bergen (2013), Leisure, Discipline and Punishment; 6th Contour Biennial, Mechelen (2013), Josef Dabernig: Panorama; Kunsthaus Graz and Neue Galerie Graz (2013). He participated at the Gwangju Biennale in 2012, the Venice Biennial in 2003 and 2001 and Manifesta 3, Ljubljana in 2000.
Monographs on the artist have been published by Kerber PhotoArt (2013), JRP|Ringier, Zürich (2008) and by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König (2005). Dabernig lives and works in Vienna.

Curated by Judit Angel

Exhibition opening: October 25th 2013, at 7 pm
Exhibition duration: October 25th–December 1st, 2013
Opening hours: Friday – Sunday, 2.00 – 6.00 pm
Location:  tranzit dielne / workshops, Studená 12, Bratislava
Erste Foundation is main partner of tranzit.