From 2016 to 2018 the window gallery Schaufenstergalerie SCHARF at Stubenberggasse was organized and curated by contemporary collective graz. Schaufenstergalerie SCHARF questioned the White Cube per se. Art oscillated between the urban structure and the gallery space. Zwischen urbanem Stadtgefüge und Galerieraum oszillierend entstand Kunst. With the curation of Schaufenstergalerie SCHARF, the contemporary collective graz set itself the goal of reflecting on different socio-political and sometimes precarious themes within exhibition projects that oscillated between event and work.
Within three years 16 exhibitions with 23 artists and cooperations with esc medien kunst labor, galerie GALERIE, Ludwig Boltzmann–Institut für Kriegsfolgenforschung and with Kunstverein Roter Keil took place there.
Schaufenstergalerie SCHARF
Feinkost Mild
Stubenberggasse 7
8010 Graz
Austria
ARCHIVE OF OPEN HISTORICAL OBJECTS
Bernadette Moser
21st of November – 12nd of December 2017
In this exhibition at Schaufenstergalerie SCHARF, Bernadette Moser presents her collection of objects, partly found by chance, partly donated, such as a snake skin, wood, bone or a cube. The presented objects form references to the artists identity. In doing so, Moser uses frames drawn on the window of the latest exhibition by Matěj Frank, who dealt with fingerprints as proof of our presence. Each object has a narrative element in it and together they tell different stories. The object is decoupled from its original conceptual history – acquires a new context of meaning, placed on a kind of altar in the artist’s studio – and finally becomes an objet trouvé in context of the installation.
Visitors are invited by the artist to bring small objects of their own on the evening of the opening. These objects will become part of Moser’s collection after the completion of the “work in progress”, which will grow over the duration of the exhibition. This exhibition is about what is found by chance and spontaneously, which is incorporated into one’s own story. How do we write history? By whom is history written? It is a matter of critically questioning how history is constructed – although historiography pretends to be objective, it cannot live up to this claim if only individual or collective histories are used, exclusionary perspectives are allowed. “There is no neutral history”. (Moser 2017)
1-X, 24.10.-21.11. 2017, GRAZ
Matěj Frank
24th of October – 21st of November 2017
Matěj Frank lives and works in Poland and the Czech Republic. In his works, he deals with space in relation to time, movement, body and sound. One of the artist’s starting point is the object, but he also deals with performance, drawing and sound. in addition to everyday phenomena and the construction of information, Frank investigates connections between image and sound. In doing so, he experiments with new ways of hearing and listening.
For Schaufenstergalerie SCHARF Frank develops a project, which he would like to implement in a different context and spatial situation. From our birth to our death we permanently leave traces of our presence. Since the Industrial Revolution, human’s impact on our natural enviornment has become bigger, culminating in the geological epoch of the Anthropocene. In addition to the geological footprint, we also leave ephemeral traces of ourselves every day without paying attention to them: fingerprints. In this infinite amount of traces the single fingerprint is unique and not repeatable. We try to keep personal information about ourselves secret, yet at the same time we leave imprints of our identity in countless places every day. The project focuses on what surrounds us every day: “The proof of our presence.” (Frank 2017)
SILENT
Karina Marusińska
opening performance by Igor F. Petković
5th of October – 24th of October 2017
Karina Marusińska (PL) is interdisciplinary artist and works with different media – ceramics, glas, installation, performance, sculpture, video. In this process, often also social oriented art projects. The process of making the work and the interaction with the visitors ist signifcant in Marusińska’s work. Beside other topics, she focuses on concepts, that deal with the tension that arises at the interface of inside and outside, private and public, special and ordinary.
These projects deal with benevolence and offensiveness. Marusińska explores boundaries and connections, that arise between two poles.
For Schaufenstergalerie SCHARF Marusińska developed a site-specific installation whose conceptual basis is a quote by Jean-Paul Sartre: eine ortsspezifische Installation deren konzeptuelle Basis ein Zitat von Jean-Paul Sartre ist: „If we were as quient and as silent as stones, our passivity would be an act.”
The work is reference to the current society without giving any judgement. These days, the world is stirred by many different themes, which often cross into the emotional. At the moment, a strong protest movement against the current government in Poland is taking place. The so-called “political right” and its conservative values and ideological ideas are gaining popularity not only in Poland, but throughout Europe. This raises the question of how an “AGAINST” can be formulated. Activist strategies are formed between active and passive resistance, but is it the raging and stone-throwing mob, or is it the silent resistance, free of vandalism and scenarious of violence, that can change systems sustainably? How can injustice and cencorship be addressed? In this conext, is it true that “talk is silver, silent is gold”?
NACHTTRAFIK
“night tobacconist’s”
Markus Pippan
7th of July – 20th of September 2017
Within this exhibition, Markus Pippan transported the urban life of Graz into Schaufenstergalerie SCHARF. In the medium of painting, the artist showed a snapshot of the night-tobacconist’s at Jakominiplatz in Graz. In the evenings, this place is not only a point of contact for tobacco users, but also a popular meeting place for nighthawks. The small, brightly lit house in the city centre is located on a frequented place of public transport. In his artistic work, Pippan is mainly concerned with urbanity, city views and city life per se. Thus, highly frequented places, such as train stations, are often motifs in his works, in which he captures the movement and dynamics – the liveliness of a place. Public space and its places – places of encounter and exchange, but also so-called non-places. The public space, captured in this painting, was transported into the window gallery – at the same time Schaufenstergalerie SCHARF itself is also a public space. A microcosm of the inner city of Graz was shown in this exhibition. In addition, a short lecture on public space by contemporary collective graz took place at the opening. In Graz, it was mainly Univ.-Prof. Dr. Fenz, who had a lasting influence on students with his lectures on public space. Not only our exhibition concepts, but also our curatorial work with and in public space were significantly influenced by Dr. Werner Fenz.
WER SÄT WIRD ERNTEN
“who sows will reap qoute”
Clemens Kranawetter
screening of the short film „Erinnern Sie sich?“ (“Do you remember?”) by Heinz Trenczak at the opening
2nd of June – 5th of July 2017
This exhibition dealt with the duality of transgressions and growth, of actions and subsequent reactions. The title refers on a motif of art history, which among others was particularly influenced by Vincent van Gogh: the sower. The curation of Schaufenstergalerie SCHARF provides that for each opening a performance, action, intervention etc. is taking place. This time, an action was already carried out in advance: sunflower seeds were sown by artist Clemens Kranawetter in the deforested meadows of the river Mur. This staged action was documented in a series of photographs by Christian KRI Kammerhofer. In this way, three different components of the exhibition project developed: the staged action – the artistic documentation of it – and the object created for the window gallery. Common to all three components as an installation was the convergence of the act of creation.
Another aspect of this exhibition concept was the presentation of the short film by Heinz Trenczak. In divergence to the work of Clemens Kranawetter, Trenczak’s film thematizes not only the memory but also the passing away – the removal of the Nazi memorial plaques “63 Jahre danach” (“63 years afterwards”) by Jochen Gerz. In this way, both works form a duality of emergence and decay – of disappearance and blossoming.
(K)EIN KOMMENTAR?
“(not) a comment?”
contemporary collective graz
opening lecture by Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx, deputy director of Ludwig Boltzmann-Instituts für Kriegsfolgenforschung Graz (“Ludwig Boltzmann – Institute for research on the consequences of war Graz”)
12th of May – 30th of May 2017
Within this exhibition project, the curators themselves became creators. This project was born out of a spontaneous idea and the need not to make the current situation taboo. The reason for the exhibition was once again to set a sign against forgetting. In the very current debate in Graz about the Mur river power plant, the topic of National Socialism became tangible again: The steps to a bunker and narrow concrete foundations of a barrack of a former forced labor camp in Liebenau were uncovered by chance during construction work for a gas pipeline.
With this project, we have set ourselves the goal of supporting this current movement, which also revolves around the discourse of memory. For a long time there was silent and almost forgottenness, now we would like to encourage people to talk, to ask questions, to get information. Political art is allowed to express – even what no one wants to express. If we no longer remember who we were, how can we know what we are – and above all where we want to go?
DIE GULDINNEN
Feinkost als Lebens-mittel
“The Guldinnen. Delicacies as grocery / expedience for life”
Doris Jauk-Hinz
8th of March – 21st of April 2017
Money is the dominant symbolic value in market economic systems, and gender inequality is inscribed in it. The female GULDINNEN were introduced in 2011 as regional money into the existing Judenburg voucher system. They are the counterpart to the “male guilder” and refer conceptually to an injustice that still exists: even after 100 years of women’s rights, women earn around 20% less for the same performance. 1000 GULDINNEN were produced for the trade at that time. The daily use of that coin creates a permanent awareness of its underlying themes.
On the 8th of March, the International Women’s Day, this project was locally expanded: The GULDIN was temporarily introduced as currency in Graz. The purchase and exchange of the coin was possible during the period of the exhibition for all interested people. 22 shops in the city centre of Graz agreed to except the GULDIN as a currency; thus it was possible to purchase products from different areas of live with it. At the opening of the exhibition Doris Jauk-Hinz made an intervention: Visitors were confronted with injustice and wage inequality. The GULDIN now also exists as a sweet snack: As a chocolate praline, teh GULDIN addresses precarious issues under a glazed cover, as well as an explicit questioning of gender-specific living conditions.
Following shops accepted DIE GULDIN as currency: Bücherstube • café erde • chic ethic FAIR TRADE SHOP • CuntRa • Das Blumenhaus Gauper • DAS GRAMM • FEINKOST MILD • FRIEDRICH AMBERGER • Genusscafé Das Tortenatelier • GRAND CAFE KAISERFELD • heidenspass • KAVKAZ-MARKT • Küchenfee • LINZBICHLER • Novosel • OPERNFOTO digital • PELL MELL • SAMEN KÖLLER • SATTLER OPTIK • spielzeugschachtel graz • ULLRICH & CO • Werner‘s Elektroladen & Eisenwaren
Supported by the Kulturamt of the City of Graz and the Styrian Government, department 9.
