Florian Pumhösl Spatial Sequence - Kunsthaus Bregenz

KUB 2012.04 | Press release
Florian Pumhösl
Spatial Sequence
26|10|2012-20|01|2013
Press conference
Wednesday, October 24, 2012, 12 noon
The exhibition is opened for the press at 11 a.m.
Opening
Thursday, October 25, 2012, 7 p.m.
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Florian Pumhösl (born 1971, lives in Vienna) is a rarity in
his generation of Austrian artists in having rigorously and
cogently developed an independent abstract formal and
pictorial language. For all its rigor of expression this language
wields a highly impressive range of contemporary
references and has immense visual potential. His international
career began at a young age—at the time of his
participation in the legendary group exhibition Backstage at
the Hamburg Kunstverein together with Dorit Margreiter
and Mathias Poledna in 1993, Florian Pumhösl was just
twenty-two years old. With the symbolic support of friends,
the artist trio’s contribution to that show pro-vided for the
removal of all the institution’s door locks during the show,
thus opening the exhibition hall’s accessibility, both really
and metaphorically. If today, almost twenty years later,
such clearly articulated reflection on the mechanisms of the
art system and its institutions seems to be more covert in
his works, yet engagement with the specific exhibition site
and its institutional features is of great significance for him,
now as then. In this respect, his big solo exhibition at the
Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Vienna in early
2011 was an eminent example. Here, by means of a
architectural route, Pumhösl set up an exemplary dialog
between the brilliantly bright exhibition space, the so-called
white space, and the black box used for film screenings. In
addition to numerous solo shows in public museums and art
halls including in Cologne, Geneva, and Amsterdam, in the
past ten years he has participated in many major art events,
such as the São Paulo Biennale, the Venice Biennale, and
documenta 12 in 2007.
Florian Pumhösl’s wide-ranging oeuvre, which includes
films, installations, objects, and glass painting, is characterized
by great reduction in terms of artistic expression
while nevertheless, despite this frugality, creating a strongly
abiding presence. In recent years, he has frequently produced
series, such as his Bewegliche Bühne [Moving Stage],
consisting of glass plates cut into various shapes, which he
presents as a kind of staging in different configurations on
sets of four supporting plates.
Another cycle of pictures titled Diminution consists of thin
glass plates painted with black lines in nine two-to-six piece
elements. Among other things, Pumhösl alludes to Hans
Richter’s Dada Heads in these works.
His central engagement with the historical formal vocabulary
of modernism and its specific thematic issues is
typical of Florian Pumhösl’s work. What interests him
frequently is not only the genealogical derivation of a
particular form, but also its social and political setting.
His projects are often preceded by lengthy and involved
research that can take him to countries such as Japan,
Tanzania, or, as recently, to the Finnish-Russian region of
Karelia.
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Florian Pumhösl will be presenting a new series at the
Kunsthaus Bregenz titled Räumliche Sequenz [Spatial
Sequence] specially produced for the occasion. The work
consists of plaster panels in three different sizes grouped in
threes, the order of each trio beginning with the smallest
and ending with the largest format. The progression of the
45-piece series of 15 subjects, subtitled Cliché, takes its
lead from the Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy’s enamel
pictures. In contrast to Moholy-Nagy, who delegated the
task in the case of his telephone pictures to a specialist firm,
Pumhösl himself applies the formal effects to his panels
using what he refers to as a cliché stamp.
The printing procedure involved goes back to the start
of the nineteenth century when stamp-like printing dies
were developed. A special feature of these dies, known in
French as »cliché«, in English stereotype, was that they
could be indefinitely reused. Concerning his new series for
the Bregenz exhibition, Pumhösl has written: »For these
works I had panels made of plaster, a homogenous mineral
material, on which I applied paint using a cliché stamp. The
transparent cliché makes it possible to design the picture
support on the visible side. An idea I find important is that
an abstract picture is, from the outset, a reproduction
(possibly of something ideal) and that its peculiar qualities
allow this to be grasped.«
The formal patterns of indigo blue that rhythmicize the
plaster panels are no less important than how they are
applied. Against the backdrop of Pumhösl’s interest in early
Latin-American woven patterns and their reception by
modernist artists, for instance, a discursive field opens up
combining extra-European influences, the importance of
design, and seriality in art. Seriality comes across especially
clearly through the repetition of line patterns within a trio
and the potential for reproducing the same by means of the
cliché stamp.
Moreover, the line groupings on the individual panels, with
their potential for musical interpretation, point to a central
aspect of historical abstraction. And the positioning of the
panels in space, the distances and open areas Pumhösl has
set between them, also recall a time-based sequence and in
this sense resemble a musical score.
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KUB Billboards
Michael Part and Florian Pumhösl
15|10|2012 — 20|01|2013
Seestraße Bregenz
The Billboards extend the principle of seriality into ur-
ban space. The 6-part series cooperatively produced by
Michael Part and Florian Pumhösl reflects the influence of
basic photographic principles on the abstract picture.
The billboards in this case are defined as originals that
employ the photographic process of cyanotype printing.
In this Prussian blue printing process a support coated with
an iron-based light-sensitive chemical is exposed to light,
which turns it blue. The 3.3 x 3.3 meter textile squares are
exposed to incident light for a constant period of time over
several days, whereby ultimately the various meteorolog-
ical conditions are what produce the picture. In a sense, the
surfaces reflect what the pictures themselves saw.
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KUB Publication
Florian Pumhösl
Spatial Sequence
The Florian Pumhösl publication presents not just the new
series of works on show at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, it also
catalogues all of his exhibitions since 1993. For Pumhösl,
born 1971 in Vienna, the exhibition is his most important
medium. The publication presents his works chronological-
ly in the context of their respective exhibitions, with illus-
trations, dates, and in part explanatory texts on individual
works.
The American art historian Juli Carson and Berlin-based
André Rottmann, both of whom have followed Pumhösl’s
creative work for many years, engage knowledgeably in
their essays with his oeuvre, his theoretical considerations,
formal vocabulary, and his working techniques. Yilmaz
Dziewior’s contribution confines itself to the Bregenz
exhibition and its conceptual background.
Florian Pumhösl
Spatial Sequence
Works in Exhibitions
1993 — 2012
Edited by Yilmaz Dziewior
Graphic design: Yvonne Quirmbach, Berlin
Essays by Juli Carson, Yilmaz Dziewior, André Rottmann
German | English
Ca. 380 pages
18 x 23 cm
Hardcover
Due out: December 2012
52.– EUR
KUB Online-Shop
www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at
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KUB Artist’s Edition
Florian Pumhösl
Gauze Panel
Exclusive special editions for the Kunsthaus Bregenz are a
result of close collaboration with artists and their
processes of production.
Florian Pumhösl’s edition for Kunsthaus Bregenz is a
photogram of cotton gauze. Pumhösl has previously
referred to the »photographic character« of webbed
structures, such as gauze webbing from the pre-Columbian
cultures of Peru which for him, in their serial patterning
and coloring, are of significant importance as one of the
departure points for modern abstraction.
Photogram on silver gelatin paper
Ca. 60 x 50 cm
Limited edition of 10 + 3 A. P.
Numbered and signed
1,800.– EUR
Including 10% sales tax; packing and mailing charges extra
Please contact: Caroline Schneider
c.schneider@kunsthaus-bregenz.at
Phone: +43-5574-485 94-444
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Florian Pumhösl
Biography
Florian Pumhösl was born in Vienna in 1971, where he
lives and works. Recent exhibitions include: Mathias
Poledna | Florian Pumhösl, Raven Row, London; 678,
Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK),
Vienna; Florian Pumhösl, Krobath, Vienna (all 2011);
Diminution, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin (2010);
Bewegliche Bühne, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und
Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2010); Florian Pumhösl, Lisson
Gallery, London (2008); Florian Pumhösl, Galerie Daniel
Buchholz, Cologne (2007); documenta 12, Kassel (2007);
27th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo (2006); Florian
Pumhösl. Animated Map, Neue Kunst Halle St. Gallen, St.
Gallen (2005–2006); Florian Pumhösl, House of Art, Ceské
Budejovice (2005).
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Works in the exhibition
Cliché 1-15, 2012
15 picture groups, each 3 parts
Dimensions:
36.6 x 25.6 x 2 cm;
73.4 x 51.4 x 2 cm;
146.5 x 102.5 x 2 cm
Stamping with oil pant on ceramic plaster
Michael Part and Florian Pumhösl
15 | 10 | 2012—20 | 01 | 2013
The large-scale image on canvas is part of a series
realized for the KUB Billboards project titled
15 | 10 | 2012—20 | 01 | 2013. For this series, the
concept of seriality characterizing the exhibition is
transferred to the cityscape. Furthermore the work
created in a collaboration between Michael Part and
Florian Pumhösl is a reflection on the influence of
photography’s fundamental principles on the abstract
image.
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Partners and Sponsors
The Kunsthaus Bregenz would like to thank its partners
for their generous financial support and
the cultural commitment that goes along with it.
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Venue | Organizer
Kunsthaus Bregenz
Director
Yilmaz Dziewior
Chief Executive
Werner Döring
Curator
Rudolf Sagmeister
Curator of the KUB Arena
Eva Birkenstock
Communications
Birgit Albers | ext. -413
b.albers@kunsthaus-bregenz.at
Press photos to download
www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at
Art Education
Kirsten Helfrich | ext. -417
k.helfrich@kunsthaus-bregenz.at
Publications | editions
Katrin Wiethege | ext. -411
k.wiethege@kunsthaus-bregenz.at
Sales Editions
Caroline Schneider | ext. -444
c.schneider@kunsthaus-bregenz.at
Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m.—6 p.m.
Thursday 10 a.m.—9 p.m.
26.10.2012, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. | 01.11.12, 10 a.m. — 9 p.m. |
08.12.12, 10 a.m. — 6 p.m. | 24. and 25.12.12 closed |
26.12.12, 10 a.m. — 6 p.m. | 31.12.12, 10 a.m. — 2 p.m. |
01.01.13, 2 p.m. — 6 p.m. | 06.01.13, 10 a.m. — 6 p.m.
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