Kunsthaus Bregenz presents VALIE EXPORT Archive on view 29 October 2011–22 January 2012.
The exhibition, VALIE EXPORT / Archive, provides the opportunity to rediscover new aspects of an internationally renowned artist whose works are counted among the canon of 20th century art history and represented in many important museum collections. In this unusual and surprising presentation at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, in part, works that hitherto have not been exhibited will be on show.
VALIE EXPORT, “Aufprägung,” 1972 © Museion. Photo: Augustin Ochsenreiter
In addition, for the first time in her long history of exhibitions, VALIE EXPORT is providing insights into her comprehensive archive that, to the present day, remains inaccessible to the broad public.
Dramaturgically, the exhibition is conceived in such a way that it intentionally thematizes temporal leaps. After the first floor shows the display cabinets for the archive, on the second floor, the work, Fragmente der Bilder einer Berührung—done already 17 years ago in Bregenz for her solo exhibition in Magazin4—will be presented in an arrangement especially conceived for the KUB. On this floor there are further re-encounters when visitors come upon photographs and installations whose phases of making and contexts of reception they were able to discover a short time before in the archive display cabinets. For instance, whereas in two archive cabinets the original jeans, a poster print and a small photo print of the legendary Aktionshose: Genitalpanik are exhibited, on the floor above the large photograph of the same work mounted on aluminium is on show as an autonomous work. It is similar with the so-called Körperkonfigurationen and the various cycles of conceptual photography that are shown in detail in their different stages on both floors.
On the top floor, a downright ‘film forest’ is presented with more than twenty works in various media and presentation formats. Here, for example, video and film installations are to be found, such as the early trailblazing media analyses, Splitscreen–Solipsism (1968), Split Reality (1970) and Adjungierte Dislokationen (1973). The large, uniform room is structured by a multitude of screens. 16 mm films such as … Remote … Remote… (1973) and Syntagma (1983) are projected here in their original format. Other films have been, or already were, converted for DVD, such as Ein perfektes Paar oder die Unzucht wechselt ihre Haut (1986), or were already conceived for digital technology. Additional works from VALIE EXPORT’s various phases of development are shown on monitors and, together with the other (moving) images, form a total presentation that illustrates the enormous range in both content and media of this significant artist. www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at
