Culture Minister Claudia Schmied: Commissioner Eva Schlegel and Markus Schinwald make a modern, critical and contemporary statement for Austria at the Venice Biennale

Schinwald's solo show at the Austrian Pavilion creates an emotinal experience

“In choosing Markus Schinwald, an outstanding artist of the younger generation, commissioner and artist Eva Schlegel has made an excellent pick for the Austrian contribution to this year’s 54th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia,” said Austrian Minister of Culture Claudia Schmied, who showed pleased with the Austrian contribution for the 54th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia.

Commissioner Eva Schlegel, Markus Schinwald, Minister of Culture Claudia Schmied, Foto: AnnABlaU / la Biennale 2011 Austria

The International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia is a recognized indicator in the art world to identify leading-edge trends in art; it is held from June 4 to November 27 this year under the general heading of ILLUMInations. The Austrian Pavilion will be ceremoniously opened by Austrian Minister of Culture Claudia Schmied and Biennale Commissioner Eva Schlegel on June 2, 5:00 p.m. The press preview is on June 1, 3:00 p.m.

The Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture has provided funding of 400,000 Euros for the conception, organization, and implementation of the exhibition at the Austrian Pavilion. Another 300,000 Euros were raised through sponsorships.

Markus Schinwald’s splendid solo exhibition at the Austrian Pavilion

“In his Biennale work, Schinwald confidently combines architectural with pictorial, sculptural, and filmic or performance elements. He subtly explores the dispositifs of control, discipline, and selfcorrection. These are inscribed in the human body, shaping and permeating it, only to reemerge on the body surface, in visible and tangible form, as psychologically charged inner worlds. For his new two-part film entitled Orient, Schinwald re-builds the entrance of the Austrian Pavilion in model form, using the situation thus created as a means to coerce the body. The abysmal vertical depths that show here become the site of the defective and compulsive,” says Commissioner Eva Schlegel, commenting on Markus Schinwald’s successful Biennale contribution.

In the framework of Bice Curiger’s general theme ILLUMInations, Markus Schinwald negotiates the representation and manipulation of space, time, light, and shadow. He does not only alter our experience of space through an element of disturbance, but also engages the architecture and history of the Austrian Pavilion – built 1934 to plans by Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) –with all its ruptures, rifts, and blemishes.

Minster Schmied: Schinwald’s contribution has strength and artistic consistency

“Markus Schinwald’s contribution is convincing because of his strength and artistic consistency in realizing his installation for the Austrian Pavilion. With all her exhibition experience, the internationally renowned commissioner Eva Schlegel succeeded to make a modern, critical, and genuinely contemporary statement for Austria at the International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, one of the most important contemporary visual art events worldwide,” Culture Minister Schmied points out.

Schinwald’s construction of space at the Austrian Pavilion is based on the principle of partitioning. By precisely positioning partition walls that hang from the ceiling, roughly down to navel height, the artist interrupts und disrupts our everyday movement routines. Over and again, visitors have to reorientate themselves in Schinwald’s labyrinthine passages and find themselves prodded into staying alert and flexible in their perception.

In the center of his artistic examination are the psychological exploration of space and body, of the uncanny and discomforting, the defective as well as the irrational depths of individual and collective existence. Schinwald focuses his observing gaze on the human body with all its deficiencies and on the sociocultural environment it is embedded in. Being involved by the artist in the spatial and temporal framework, the detached passive viewer turns into a protagonist, an active watcher who is given an opportunity to develop and pursue his or her own analogies and narrative strands. Consciously placed paintings and sculptures pick up on new narrative strands and thus accentuate the condensed emptiness.

Press material and recent photos are available for download at www.labiennale.at.

Preview days Wednesday June 1 – Friday, June 3, 2011
Press conference at the Austrian Pavilion Wednesday, June 1, 3:00 p.m.
Opening of the Austrian Pavilion Thursday, June 2, 5:00 p.m.

Wien, 31.5.2011

Geändert am 01.06.2011