Opening exhibition Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman Seilerstätte 7, 1010 Wien. The magnificent Wilhelminian Style House with five portal windows at Weihburggasse and five portal windows Seilerstätte offers a nearly 300 sqm ground floor, bright exhibitionhall in the best part of Viennas downtown.

 

Having had our first coming exhibition 2009 in Innsbruck we have the honour to open our Vienna Gallery with John M Armleder late Opening Sa 19.11.2011 12h. John M Armleder ist present. Markus Mittringer speaks. Exhibition through 3.3.2012.

 

John M Armleder (born in Geneva in 1948, lives in Geneva and New York, since 1994 professor at the Braunschweig University of Art), a performance artist, painter, sculptor, critic, curator and exhibitionary is among the most important and most influential conceptual artists of our time. His unmistakable, multi-faceted oeuvre, comprising sculptures, paintings, drawings, happenings, installations and video works, from the very start has been characterised by a persistent reflecting on modern art history and a reexamination of the concept of art per se. Numerous international exhibitions, e.g. at the 1986 Venice Biennial, at the Museum of Modern Art New York, in Austria 1993 Secession Vienna and in the Kunstraum Innsbruck, 2010 John M. Armleder Leuchtet Ein Lokremise/ Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2011 Away Peggy Guggenheim Collection Venice.

 

Originally rooted in the Fluxus movement of the 1960s, Armleder, in the years following, influenced arts of all kind. Particular international renown the artist acquired, from 1979 onwards, with his Furniture Sculptures: combining furniture, lamps or musical instruments with abstract, monochrome or geometric painting the artist raised questions as to the artworthiness of everyday objects.

 

Konsequent inkonsequent arbeitet John M Armleder an einem Kunstbegriff, bei dem die Wertigkeiten der Kunst permanent in Frage gestellt werden. Seine Strategie des Crossover, jener Überblendung der Sphären von Hochkultur und Warenhaus, macht ihn zu einem Wegbereiter für die Gegenwartskunst. Mit einer unvergleichlichen Leichtigkeit verbindet sich in John M Armleders Schaffen Kunststil mit Lifestyle, trifft der entäußerte Formenschatz der historischen Moderne auf aktuelle Massenkultur. Diese „Jongleurakte zwischen Trivialität und verfeinerter Ästhetik“ (Bernhard Bürgi) verlieren sich indes nicht im zweckfreien Spiel, sondern führen einen raffinierten Diskurs über die Spielregeln von Kunst und Kunstbetrieb oder um John M Armleder selbst zu zitieren: Denn das ist genau der Antrieb, ein Kunstwerk überhaupt zu schaffen, was für mich ein ständiger Anlass zum Staunen ist. Ausschnitt Pressetext John M Armleder Leuchtet Ein Kunstmuseum St. Gallen/ Lokremise

 

John M. Armleder curated as an opening exhibition for our Vienna Gallery his show entitled Late with among others the furniture sculptor Jelinek – a minimalist geometric painting with left and right of it a fluorescent tube chandeliers from the Viennese Café Jelinek – and a group of new Pour Paintings, sculptures made out of utility tables or used and rolled wall-to-wall carpets, geometric paintings with trompe l’oeil and his recent works, sculptures made out of glass which he created for his exhibition away at Peggy Guggenheim Collection Venice 2012, presented in the space with the wallpainting Clonus again the repeating pattern of a headless comic clown in red, yellow or blue.

John M Armleder