 The Beginnings of Space Travel (hardcore version), 2003 Courtesy Alona Kagan Gallery, New York Werner Reiterer The Alona Kagan Gallery is pleased to announce Austrian-based artist Werner Reiterer's first solo exhibition in New York. This exhibition, featuring works on paper and sculpture, consists of humorous yet intellectually complex works, in which the artist employs surrealist strategies that trap, bluff, and puzzle the viewer. In his new sculptural work entitled, "The Beginnings of Space Travel" (hardcore version), 2003, Reiterer has rendered himself as a life-size blow-up doll, who while nonchalantly inhaling air from an oxygen tank, floats effortlessly above the ground beneath him. In "Nude Balancing on one leg and painted with invisibility", 2002, a scale in a glass vitrine oscillates irregularly between 58 kg and 70 kg without any apparent external influence. The reference to an "abstract act" lend a sculptural dimension to this paradoxical image. Like the work of Duchamp, there is parity between the mental and physical materiality of these banal objects. Reiterer subjects these everyday objects to his own version of reality, and in doing so creates disorder and urges us to experience the absurd. Also on view are 20 works on paper from "The Drawn Exhibitions" series. Humor, irony and linguistic incongruities inspire these meticulous drawings executed in 17 grades of lead. Their primary subject matter is reconfigured and deconstructed architectural spaces and the way in which we relate to these spaces mentally and physically. While the artist has been widely exhibited in major European museums and galleries such as the Kunsthaus Basel-Land, the Kunstverein Hannover, The Freud Museum, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, The Secession Gallery in Vienna, The Art Museum in Schwerin and the Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, this is his first major show in New York. Werner Reiterer has been awarded several prestigious European awards and has been invited to do several projects in the public arena. He also has a major upcoming exhibition at the Ursula Krinzinger Gallery, in Vienna. Exhibition: March 6 - April 10, 2004 Gallery hours: Tue-Sat 10am - 6pm Alona Kagan Gallery 540 West 29th Street USA-New York, NY 10001 Telephone +1 212 560-0670 Fax +1 212 560-0671 Email info@alonakagangallery.com www.alonakagangallery.com |
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