The Kunstverein Hannover presents, "Orient," a solo exhibition by the acclaimed artist Markus Schinwald

Markus Schinwald
"Orient"
27 August–6 November 2011

Kunstverein Hannover
Sophienstraße 2
D–30159 Hannover
www.kunstverein-hannover.de
Tuesday to Saturday 12.00–7.00 pm
Sunday and public holiday 11.00 am–7.00 pm

The Kunstverein Hannover presents, "Orient," a solo exhibition by the acclaimed artist Markus Schinwald (born 1973 in Salzburg). The works of the artist who is representing Austria at this year's 54th Biennale in Venice have focused since the late 1990s on the human body as the projection surface of individual being and as a culturally shaped construction.

His art, which is influenced by the cultural history of the body, the philosophy of technology, psychoanalysis as well as dance and performance, makes assured use of diverse media and artistic formats. Schinwald playfully combines sculptural objects, paintings, videos, stage-like installations and architectonic interventions to form multifaceted interacting structures. Markus Schinwald's exhibitions are highly complex assemblages whose tension derives from a curious ambivalence of seductive aesthetics and a fractious rejection of a one-dimensional reading.

Beginning with his most recent film "Orient" (2011), subtle connections come about in the exhibition at the Kunstverein Hannover to anthropomorphous sculptures made of Chippendale table legs, to an anthropoid marionette and reworked historical portraits as well as an installation comprising aquariums populated with live fish and architectonic exhibition models. In formal aesthetic terms, Schinwald structures the exhibition spaces by meanings of a colorfully reduced, minimalist opening and closing section with a middle section in between whose walls and floors are dark red.

The piece's title "Orient," which simultaneously provided the name of the exhibition as a whole, awakens associations to countries in the Near East and Central Asia. But there is an etymological relationship to the word orientation, the physical as well as mental attributes of which are employed by Schinwald as a dramaturgical means in order to develop physically tangible exhibition spaces.

A highpoint of the exhibition is a new, twenty-one meter long installation conceived especially for the Kunstverein Hannover encompassing seven aquariums embedded into the wall. The continuously reorganizing pictorial worlds populated by living fish and architectonic models of previous exhibitions recall showcases and dioramas that continue the dreamlike weightlessness and surreal atmosphere from the film "Orient" (2011).


Curated by
Ute Stuffer, Kunstverein Hannover


Media contact
Catharina Rahlff-Mackeprang, Kunstverein Hannover
presse@kunstverein-hannover.de
T +49 (0)511 169 92 78–12
Press material is available for download at www.kunstverein-hannover.de/presse.


Catalogue
Markus Schinwald
Ed. Kunstverein Hannover and LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz
Texts by Roland Meyer, Ute Stuffer, Wolfgang Ullrich
Preface: Stella Rollig, René Zechlin
German/English, 144 pages with numerous illustrations
Softcover 33 x 24 cm
Published by Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nürnberg
ISBN 978-3-86984-236-3

The exhibition was generously supported by
the state of Lower Saxony
Nord/LB Norddeutsche Landesbank
Freundeskreis of Kunstverein Hannover
The Kunstverein is institutionally supported by the Cultural Office of the Capital City of Hannover.


*Image above:
Courtesy of Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna / Gió Marconi, Milan / Yvon Lambert, Paris / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011.