Austria is presenting three artistic positions: Elke Krystufek, Dorit Margreiter and Franziska &
Lois Weinberger chosen by the commissioners VALIE EXPORT and Silvia Eiblmayr. Each of
these artistic positions deals with a specific theme, and while their forms of expression and the
media and materials they use differ greatly, they all share a structural approach, which critically
questions the orders determining social aspects of our lives, our culture and politics. All have
developed new, spatially oriented works for the exhibition with specific references to the
pavilion, its function and architecture, transferring it into a site of temporal and spatial memory.
Elke Krystufek concentrates on several themes in her painting installation “TABOU TABOO”
(2009): Firstly, Polynesia, the mythical place of liberated living and eroticism as it was
conceived and conveyed in Modern European art; and, secondly, with the issue of a specifically
“female gaze”, which the artist approaches experimentally working with a male model. The title
“TABOU TABOO” is a reference to the film “Tabu” (1931) by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, which
was filmed on the Polynesian Islands, further Sigmund Freud’s “Totem und Tabu” as well as the
Polynesian origin of the word “Taboo” in general.
Krystufek also replaces the word “Austria” on the outside of the pavilion with the word “Tabu”,
and thus attacks the identity of the building.
Dorit Margreiter’s film “Pavilion” (2009) is a filmic analysis of the pavilion and its nature as
representational and exhibition architecture. From today’s perspective and on the basis of a
contemporary understanding of art, the artist applies a range of artistic strategies and means to
explore the building’s fundamental idea of being a model-like, ideal space for the presentation of
art. Dealing with the pavilion becomes dealing with its image and the visual strategies it has
been seen and thus constructed. Margreiter conducts her methodological analysis by
establishing different categories: firstly, the pavilion as a utopian space for art, which is an
architectural sculpture in itself; secondly, the exhibition and its sub-structure; furthermore the
categories of performance, documentation and finally – self-reflectively – the medium film.
“Pavilion” is a grainy black-and-white film with a surreal quality. Its staged rendition at the actual
site mirrors the pavilion in its space and in time, it is a projection of itself onto itself.
In their use of outside space and by incorporating the topic “nature” into their artistic concept,
Franziska & Lois Weinberger bring a fascinating artistic aspect to the Austrian pavilion and
the Giardini in general. Their outside piece “Laubreise” is an architectural structure that can be
entered and houses an object: “the architecture – a perfect makeshift / the roof is a loosely
fitted, blue plastic tarp / letting sunlight in during the day and revealing the sky.” (F. & L.
Weinberger).
In “Laubreise” as well as in an installation of works from 1977-2009 presented inside the
pavilion, F. & L. Weinberger deal with the relationship between “nature” and “culture”; their work
is about the subtle peripheries of perception, of an invisible/spiritual nature, which is
experienced in a situational and processual manner.
Catalog
VALIE EXPORT, Silvia Eiblmayr, eds., Elke Krystufek. Dorit Margreiter. Franziska & Lois
Weinberger, Austrian pavilion, 53. International Art Exhibition − La Biennale di Venezia, 2009;
texts by Hildegund Amanshauser, Xavier Arakistain, Roel Arkesteijn, Barbara Clausen, an
interview by Dieter Buchhart, introduction by V. EXPORT and S. Eiblmayr