Catalogue
Users's Manual
(p. 193)
This book offers a sidelong journey through the multi-facetted body of
workmade by the Austrian artist Heimo Zobernig, from his earliest pieces
which appeared in the late 1970s to the exhibition held at the CAPC
contemporary art museum in Bordeaux in 2009.
Echoing themise en scène-like device proposed by Zobernig for the
museum's nave, this catalogue brings together a number of projects
selected by the artist around notions of theatricality and display. From early
attempts at set production to thoughts about the conditions inwhich art
appears, by way of its most minimal of statements (plinth, canvas, screen,
exhibition space...), from relational and stage-related devices (sites for
meetings, lectures, performances...) to representational technologies
(handycam video, special effects...), and on to the use of curtains in his
latest works, Zobernig's oeuvre is forever questioning mechanisms of
‘monstration' and perception.
This book also offers a novel line of thinking about the layout of an artwork.
For some thirty years, publications have been an essential factor in his
art praxis. Just like exhibition venues, Zobernig sees the printed medium
as a site for questioning. In both instances,what is involved is challenging
production standards and representational conventions through a system
of displacements and shifts which are not devoid of irony, as is illustrated
by the typos and slips left on book covers, and the often cobbled-together
nature of sculptures and videos alike, which introduce an effect of
reflective distance.
The artist, who has himself designed more than sixty books (all on view for
the first time at the CAPC), decided to hand the entire job of designing this
book over to the graphic designers Experimental Jetset (Marieke Stolk,
Danny van den Dungen, Erwin Brinkers). Their brief was to interact with the
artist's editorial praxis – and we actually find the strict arrangement that
calls to mind the minimalism of his installations and sculptures, with the use
of the standard A4 format and the conventional Helvetica font. The lists of
words borrow the classification principle adopted by the artist inmany of
his publications. Based on the acronym“CAPC”, the word lists are taken
by the graphic designers from the
Lexikon der Kunst 1992 drawn up by
Zobernig in conjunction with Ferdinand Schmatz – a primer of words used
in the field of art.
The works are here presented in chronological order, but they are
nevertheless subject to a quite specific visual treatment. Echoing the book
Farbenlehre (1994), where the artist, again aided and abetted by Ferdinand
Schmatz, compiled all colour theories from Antiquity to the 20th century,
the designers have devised a chromatic sequencing (black and white/
monochrome/four-colour process) which develops by following the order
of the eight-page sections forming the traditional matrix of printed books.
The evolving and cyclical nature of the chronology is further bolstered
by the decision to get the images to “float” from one page to the next,
even if this means dividing them. Rhythm and sequencing combined
introduce a cinematic effect – a kind of visual and philological emanation
of the chronology.
Likewise listed in chronological order, the writings were chosen by Heimo
Zobernig, the art critic Catherine Chevalier, and myself, associating
“historical” texts hitherto available only in German and English (Helmut
Draxler, Klemens Gruber, Monika Meister,
Juliane Rebentisch, Peter Weibel, Heimo Zobernig) with new essays, specifically written about the issues of
theatricality and display (
Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Catherine Chevalier,
Moritz Küng, Diletta Mansella).
(...)
Charlotte Laubard,
Director of theCAPCmusée d'art contemporain
