Peer Production

STURTEVANT at Brasserie Atlas

Artist: Miky Kral

Venue: Brasserie Atlas, Brussels

Exhibition Title: STURTEVANT

Date: July 3 - 15, 2020

Photography: Fabrice Schneider

Press release:

The idea to make a show centered on Sturtevant came out of the blue. Although known to me for a long time I never fully got the point of Sturtevant’s approach. It must have been while reading an introduction to François Laruelle’s non-philosophy that the penny dropped. The concept of radical immanence reverberated immediately with Sturtevant. That felt as the missing link in all my dealing with representation, complicity and institutional critique. ‘With Sturtevant’ (derived from ‘with non-philosophy’ to be read repeatedly in the above mentioned introduction to Laruelle by Ray Brassier) I was able to think horizontally in a way that was new to me.

Basically, I wanted to step into Sturtevant’s shoes. Just for some time. In a former version of this text I wrote, ‘this suggests Sturtevant’s practice as not necessarily depending on Sturtevant’s person and perpetuates questions concerning authorship on a subsequent level; Sturtevant as an axiom, as a technique.’ I did a couple of works by contemporary artists – Monika Baer, Merlin Carpenter, Olivier Foulon/Alexander Lieck, Laura Owens, Norbert Schwontkowski and R. H. Quaytman. Treated them as Sturtevants. Chose them as Sturtevants. That means I had no specific thing in mind, but an unfocused gaze that halted when something resonated, affiliated.

Later on, I started inside jokes. I did David Hammons’s Flag, reacting to Sturtevant’s Johns Flag. I had learned more about Sturtevant’s life (mainly through Bruce Hainley’s book). Sturtevant questioned reality, and the term ‘Individual Mythologies’ bore entirely new meaning to me. Asked about the fact people kept emphasizing Sturtevant would be a female artist Sturtevant used to reply – ‘that’s medieval.’ Global patriarchy is a primal decision, Sturtevant resisted non-philosophically. Therefore, it was necessary to reject being pinned down to gender, nevertheless, Sturtevant’s works ‘deal with identity.’ (Sturtevant ‘uses the immanence of the real to de-specularize those objects which philosophy cocoons in its reflexive transcendence.’) Sturtevant had a feminist attitude in the way concepts of identity were questioned, foremost the one of the artist. To me, the genesis of Sturtevant’s practice seems to be strongly informed by the establishment of the artist as role model. Sturtevant presented this role model as non-binary.

To bring in K-HOLE was both a way of addressing contemporary role-modelling and pushing further horizontally. To fathom the impossible complicity of radical immanence with the collapse of subject and object. To me, this characterizes the tension between Sturtevant’s paintings/objects and Sturtevant’s later work of video/collage. Ironically, one could describe Sturtevant as Normcore avant la lettre. But in fact, the opposite is true. ‘With Sturtevant’ dilutes with the loss of distinction between subjects and objects. Normcore, however, sees this as an opportunity for connection and enhancement. Sturtevant kept a relationship with each individual artwork, Normcore means a maxed out multiplicity of relationships. Ultimately, Normcore is just another way of reification. Sturtevant used structures of reification as artistic material. Isn’t that the reason Sturtevant was dismissed as copyist and obstructionist by so many people?!

Miky Kral, Brussels, June 2020

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Virtual Virtue at FRANZ JOSEFS KAI 3

Artists: Miky Kral, Hong Zeiss

Venue: FRANZ JOSEFS KAI 3, Vienna

Exhibition Title: Virtual Virtue

Curated by: Gudrun Ingenthron

Date: May 24 - June 15, 2018

Photography: kunst-dokumentation.com

Press release:

Virtual Virtue is an exhibition about painting. Painting as more than painting but also painting as just painting, as a medium that confines in itself the means for its own transcendence.

The title suggests a connection between virtue and virtuality that only at a very first glance could sound improbable. Winking an eye to the historical relations between virtuosity and the constructedness of the medium painting, this exhibition reclaims the legitimacy of mastering a pictorial language in order to address from within it the net of semiological relations firstly denounced by the etymological path between virtue, connected with moral values and inherent natural qualities, to virtuality as something existing in essence or effect, though not actually or in fact.
The strategies elected by the two painters to approach this virtual virtue are different. If Hong Zeiss pushes ambiguity to its limits to turn his paintings into reflections about singularity or seriality, about medium of format, Miky Kral uses a reflection on the ability of (digital) image production to bypass its constructedness as a mirror to addresses the (opposite) dual property of painting, as the medium that allows, precisely for its undeniable and unavoidable factitiousness, for both modes of virtue/virtual to be simultaneously present.
The exhibition space and context create a dispositif (1) in which the idiosyncratic pictorial treaties of Zeiss and Kral are dismantled and subsequently reassembled, creating multidirectional communication possibilities and within them new hypothesis situated in serial affinities and/or in the vicinities of their works.

Ingenthton’s intervention on Virtual Virtue unfolds as an answer to the dialogue that the works of Hong Zeiss and Miky Kral propose through the development of the concept of Immanent Critique. This concept, developed in conversation between the artists seeks to situate critique within the artistic piece and not beyond. That is, in the work of art there is always -or at least could be- the possibility for a self-reflection of the nature of the work itself, its possibilities and limitations, its boundaries and extensions.
In this sense, the paintings by Zeiss and Kral refuse the contemporary temptation to “revitalize painting”, that is, to engage in a form of pictorial production intended to renew the possibilities of painting or even to defend its role and validity amidst an inter and trans-medial art production. Instead of trying to refuse tradition as a statement towards “contemporaneity” or even “criticality”, their works selected for Virtual Virtue engage consciously with tradition by reframing it. Their approach to painting reveals itself as always related to an outside and in this sense the level of significance in which their discourse unfolds appeals more to the realm of desire that that of the sensible.

Text by Ana de Almeida

1) Dispositiv is understood as an arrangement, coming from the French word dispositif that, just as the Portuguese or Spanish dispositivo relates to the latin dispositio - a system used in Western classical rhetoric for the organization of arguments.

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Vergänglichkeit, privat, mit Kätzchen. at Christian Leis

Trois Tableaux

Artists: Gabriel Barbi, Guillaume Clermont, Sebastian Doplbaur, Peter Fritzenwallner, FM (Fukunaga Daisuke, Soshiro Matsubara), Katharina Höglinger, Franziska Ipfelkofer, Lukas Janitsch, Ernst Yohji Jäger, Miky Kral, Joakim Martinussen, Wolfgang Matuschek, Niklas Schöler, Lena Sieder Semlitsch, Jakub Vrba, Hong Zeiss

Venue: Christian Leis, Department für zeitgenössische Kunst, Vienna

Exhibition Title: Vergänglichkeit, privat, mit Kätzchen

Opening: March 23, 2018

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Trois Tableaux at n.w.w.n.n.l.n.o.

Artists: Miky Kral, Jakub Vrba, Hong Zeiss

Venue: n.w.w.n.n.l.n.o. (no white walls, no neon lights, no opening), Brussels

Exhibition Title: Trois Tableaux

On invitation by: Guillaume Clermont

Opening: Dec 8, 2017

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Madame at Justice

Artists: Andrea Friesacher, Ernst Yohji Jäger, Florma( Flora Lechner, Norma Kiskan), FM (Fukunaga Daisuke, Soshiro Matsubara), Hong Zeiss, Jakub Vrba, Johanna Binder, Katharina Höglinger, Lena Sieder Semlitsch, Maximilian Anelli-Monti, Moritz Pisk, Wolfgang Matuschek

Venue: Justice, Vienna

Exhibition Title: Madame

Curated by: Ernst Yohji Jäger & Hong Zeiss, supported by Ilse Lafer

Opening: Nov 13, 2017

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Still in Business at le casier

Artist: Miky Kral

Venue: Le Casier (at Ecole de recherche graphique), Brussels

Exhibition Title: Still in Business

Curated by/Exhibition display: Guillaume Clermont

Opening: Nov 6, 2017

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The Happy Fainting of Painting #2 curated by_Hans Jürgen Hafner & Gunter Reski at Krobath

Artists: Art & Language, Olga Balema, Josef Bauer, Tim Berresheim, Lutz Braun, Sabeth Buchmann & Hong Zeiss, HC Dany, Helmut Draxler, Heinrich Dunst, Christian Egger, Fabian Ginsberg, Ellen Gronemeyer, Hans-Jürgen Hafner, Rosa Hausleithner, Stefan Hayn, Christian Höller, Elke Silvia Krystufek, Claudia Kugler, Ulrich Lamsfuss, Christine Lemke, Birgit Megerle, Anna Meyer, Ariane Müller, Robert Müller, Vanessa Joan Müller, Kito Nedo, Chris Reinecke, Berthold Reiss, Gunter Reski, Pieter Schoolwerth, Lin May Saeed, Avery Singer, Dominik Sittig, Paul Sochacki, Catharina Szonn, Anke Völk, Marcus Weber, Claudia Zweifel

Venue: Galerie Krobath, Vienna

Exhibition Title: The Happy Fainting of Painting #2 curated by_Hans Jürgen Hafner & Gunter Reski

Curated by/Exhibition display: Hans Jürgen Hafner & Gunter Reski

Opening: Sept 14, 2017

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Two paintings walk into a bar. One says... at Super

Artists: Konrad Krcal, Jakub Vrba, Hong Zeiss

Venue: Kunstraum Super, Vienna

Exhibition Title: Two paintings walk into a bar. One says...

Opening: June 23, 2017

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Parallax

Artists: Brishty Alam, Minda Andren, Josefin Arnell, Taschko Deliyski, Marc Alex Dumoulin, Jennifer Gelardo, Benjamin Grodin, Jessyca R. Hauser, Lukas Heistinger, Alexander Jackson Wyatt, Ludwig Kittinger, Galya Krumova, Pencho Leshtarov, Omri Livne, Phelim McConigly, Billie Meskens, Fernando Mesquita, David Muth, Flavio Palasciano, David Peschka, Ivo Petrov, James Swift, Hong Zeiss, Julia Znoj

Venue: Medical Museum, Uni Hospital Georgi Stranski, Pleven, Bulgaria

Exhibition Title: Parallax

Curated by: Phelim McConigly

Opening: Sept 08, 2016

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