 Dysuniversal: Exhibition View Courtesy: Georg Kargl, Vienna Angus Fairhurst Dysuniversal Click for English text We've been this way before, haven't we? Während der letzten 15 Jahre hat Angus Fairhurst in seinen Werken verschiedene Stränge von Ideen entwickelt, die er stets wieder aufgreift, überdenkt und überarbeitet, oft in einem solchen Masse, dass ein Werk oder eine Werkgruppe keine offensichtlichen formalen Eigenschaften mit irgendeinem anderen gemein hat. Malerei, Performance, Animation, Fotografie, Video, Skulpturen, Drucke, Tapeten, Zeichnungen und Collagen - alle künstlerischen Mittel werden verwendet, um die Idee mit ihrer immanenten Widersprüchlichkeit in einem Zustand permanenter Entwicklung und Überprüfung zu halten. Fairhurst spielt mit den Erwartungen des Betrachters indem er Möglichkeiten im Unmöglichen schafft - oder mit seinen eigenen Worten: "operating in a false dawn on the road to personal and artistic freedoms." Wie in dem wiederholten Motiv der Bananenschale bewegen sich Fairhursts Werke auf "unsicheren" Oberflächen: mögliche Bedeutungen werden immer mit ihren eigenen Travestien, ihren eigenen Unzulänglichkeiten konfrontiert. Oder wie bei der Bananenschale, sind mögliche Referenzen implizit - was uns bleibt ist oft eben nur die Schale. Dieses simultane "Doing/Undoing" fügt hinzu, bis nichts mehr hinzugefügt werden kann; nimmt weg, bis nichts mehr bleibt. Die Inszenierung von Erwartungen und deren gleichzeitiges Ausweichen ist ein wiederkehrendes Motiv in Fairhursts Werken - alle Möglichkeiten werden mit einem Übermass an Zweifel geimpft, durch ihren eigenen Gehalt an Unzulänglichkeit und Widersprüchlichkeit. "I am not trying to pull the wool over anyone´s eyes, or set anything up that is impermeable, everything that is done reveals itself. There is, or there should be no illusion in the making of any structure. Every step on the way is clear and each step is in itself quite banal, even quite an obvious step to make. Whatever happens, however, happens between each step”. Diese Herangehensweise von "Doing/Undoing", von Selbst-Enthüllung und gelegentlichem humorvollen Selbstwiderspruch kommt auch in den gewählten Titeln von Fairhursts Ausstellungen zum Ausdruck: "Low Expectations, Lower Expectations, Lowest Expectations"; "Fainter and Fainter"; "The Missing Link"; "Underdone/Overdone"; "Things that don't work properly, Things that never stop"; "Inflated, Deflated"; "Some went mad, Some ran away"; "A cheap and ill-fitting relationship"; "My house fell down but now I can see the stars"; "A couple of differences between thinking and feeling"; "Man who wants to know what the back of his head looks like"; "Abandabandon"; "Dysuniversal". Schlussfolgerungen, im Sinne von diskursiver Klarheit, werden abgelehnt; nicht nur würden sie Fairhurst langweilen, sondern seine Praxis vereinfachen und ersticken. Dies unterstreicht seine Überzeugung, dass jegliches Bild der Welt (oder ein Bild innerhalb der Welt) nie vollständig sein kann, dass die Welt des glücklichen Menschen verschieden ist von jener des Unglücklichen, und dass daher nur die Summe aller Realitäten die Welt ist und sie repräsentieren kann. Was der Künstler hinzufügt ist die Inszenierung der normativen Erwartung von Fertigstellung und künstlerischer Vollendung um ihr anschliessend wieder auszuweichen. Fairhursts jüngste Werke wie "Six Billboards Body und Text Removed" (2004) zeigen parallele Herangehensweisen, die schon in früheren Werken wie "All Evidence of Man Removed" (1992) präsent waren, in welchem er ausgehend von Postkarten, alle körperhaften, figurativen Elemente entfernt. Oder das Überlagern von verschiedenen Strukturen wie in "Low Expectations, Lower Expectations, Lowest Expectations" (1997), indem unterschiedliche Muster so dicht geschichtet sind, dass die einzelne Struktur nur noch erschwert lesbar ist - dadurch entsteht eine Informationsdichte, die so undurchlässig ist, dass der Text seine originalen Bezüge hinter sich lässt. Es ist vergleichbar mit einem Wort, das durch permanente Wiederholung seine Bedeutung verliert, und letztlich dadurch wieder an Bedeutung gewinnt. Die reine Vorstellung des Parallelen ist immer erhebend. Jener jähe Augenblick des Erkennens, der plötzlich ans Licht gebracht und ebenso plötzlich wieder ins Dunkel zurückgeworfen wurde. Stefan Kalmar Ausstellungsdauer: 11.11.2004 - 9.1.2005 Oeffnungszeiten: Di-Fr 13 - 19 Uhr, Do 13 - 20 Uhr, Sa 11 - 15 Uhr Georg Kargl Fine Arts Schleifmühlgasse 5 A-1040 Wien Telefon +43 1 585 41 99 Fax +43 1 585 41 99-9 Email georg.kargl@sil.at Angus Fairhurst Dysuniversal We've been this way before, haven't we? Over the past 15 years, Angus Fairhurst has developed different strands of ideas and works, keeping them constantly re-visiting, re-thinking and re-working, often to such a degree that one work or group of works might have no apparent formal properties in common with any of the other. Painting, performance, animation, photography, video, bronze sculptures, prints, wallpapers, drawings and collages all artistic means are employed while constantly developing and revising these ideas contradictions are openly present not by default as rather by intend. From the outset of his career Angus Fairhurst played with the viewers as well as the art world's expectations, creating possibilities within the impossible - or in his own words, "operating in a false dawn on the road to personal and artistic freedoms". Like the reoccurring motif of the bananaskin, Fairhurst works move on slippery grounds, possible meaning is always confronted with its own travesty, its own comedy; or as with the banana - possible references implicit - what is left is often only the skin. His simultaneous doing and undoing - keep adding until you can't add anything else. Take everything away until there is nothing left. The staging and the failing of expectations is one of the reoccurring themes in Fairhursts works - any possibility is always injected with an excess of doubt, with its own critic, its own sense of inappropriateness. I am not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, or set anything up that is impermeable, everything that is done reveals itself. There is, or there should be no illusion in the making of any structure. Every step on the way is clear and each step is in itself quite banal, even quite an obvious step to make. Whatever happens, however, happens between each step. This approach of doing, and undoing, of self revelation and by while humorous self contradiction, becomes also apparent when reading some of Fairhursts work and exhibition titles of the past 15 years, like "Low Expectations, Lower Expectations, Lowest Expectations"; "Fainter and Fainter"; "The Missing Link"; "Underdone/Overdone"; "Things that don't work properly, Things that never stopp"; "Inflated, Deflated"; "Some went mad, Some ran away"; "A cheap and ill fitting relationship"; "My house fell down but now I can see the stars"; "A couple of differences between thinking and feeling"; "Man who wants to know what the back of his head looks like"; "Abandabandon". Clear conclusions, in the sense of discursive clarity, are clearly rejected they might not only borrify Fairhurst they would also simplify and suffocate his practice, underlining his believe that any one picture of the world (or within) can never be complete, the world of an happy man is a different one from that of an unhappy man, inevitably only the total sum of realities is and can represent the world. What Fairhurst does, also and of course not always, is staging and subsequently failing those normative expectations of completion or artistic accomplishment. His most recent works such as "Six Billboards Body and Text Removed", (2004) develop, combining and paralleling approaches already present in earlier works, such as "Watching Killer Whales Sunglasses Removed", from 1992 in which he removed all sunglasses of an poster showing people watching killer whales performing in a sea-world show, or the over layering of different structures, as present in works such as "Low Expectations, Lower Expectations, Lowest Expectations", (1997) in which individual structures are so densely overlapped that the single individual structure becomes illegible. This illegibility, this dense and opaque text has left ist original references behind. It's like saying a word over and over again until it looses its meaning, and than gets it back again. The sheer sense of the parallel is always exhilarating. That sudden moment of recognition, being suddenly brought out and suddenly thrown back again. Stefan Kalmar November 11, 2004 - January 9, 2005 |
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