Introduction by Günther Holler-Schuster, the artist is present.

DURATION: 15 th of september – 3rd of october 2015.

 Josef Schwaiger’s art takes place in the context of painting. So why not simply say that his art is painting?

The stereotypical images which we associate with painting today are far too well established. They remain backward-looking. Hence even today, with few exceptions, they still start and end up as colour slides before being placed on some wall or other. Abstract painting? Representational painting? In truth, the distinction hasn’t really mattered for a long time. Ultimately, today’s art has less to do with representation than it does with presentation. Neither is the function of the visual image taken into consideration in Schwaiger’s paintings. At the moment, painting does not serve as an instrument of illustration. Instead, it represents its own reality.

In this context, the oldest and probably most prominent visual medium is examined in relation to its actual existence. Which processes and what kind of material handling or presentations, etc., does this entail? The process of painting, a performative work process as it were yet at the same time a completely pragmatic one, is crucial in Schwaiger’s approach to painting. He analyses the medium with a deconstructive intention. Schwaiger proceeds from the material and ends up with the physical exertion of the artist and the viewing public. The latter is invited to participate in the creative act through his behaviour – it has no other option.

The concept Schwaiger uses is understandable, has certain rules and is based on experimental procedures. It harbours no secrets. The artist provides us with aspects of the physics of colour and related procedures just like an instruction manual. If one can actually speak of abstract images at all, they are ultimately the results of such experimental procedures. As a painter, therefore, Schwaiger is extremely topical and tries to give the medium a fresh impetus without abandoning it entirely.

The context of painting has broadened significantly over recent decades. Different developments in the visual media, on the one hand, and priorities in the field of art in general, such as the forcing of the performative and the participation of the viewing public, etc., have also ushered in changes and, in part, a paradigm shift in relation to painting. Josef Schwaiger’s approach to painting takes all this into account to a considerable degree.

Günther Holler-Schuster

Opening Tuesday 12th of September 2023, 7.00 PM, Galerie Reinisch, Hauptplatz 6, Graz

Introduction: Günther Holler-Schuster

The artist is present.

Exhibition until 14th of October 2023

Levente Szücs shares Serene Memories with us in his first exclusively sculpture exhibition. The Düsseldorf-based artist is actually a painter, but has always worked with three-dimensionality at the same time. This time he uses boulders, which are supplemented by carved wooden details (houses, trees, ladders, etc.) to become miniature habitats – models of places of longing or of habitable meteorites that penetrate into the vastness of space. The models, as sober and sparse as they look, have a rich measure of the imaginary. They claim a difference from the real, but that is precisely where the scope of the imagination that accompanies models in general lies. The almost meditative ensembles by Levente Szücs enable orientation and analogies. But they also offer the audience points of contact with their own longings and fears, as a kind of mobilization of their own imagination.

Günther Holler-Schuster

This time around, Galerie Reinisch Contemporary is exhibiting carpets from Morocco whose design vocabulary appears highly archaic. The creative impulse which manifests itself differently in the functional and in the spiritual dates back to mankind’s earliest days. Signs and symbols infused with puzzling content can be found in cave drawings and on rock carvings, on household objects, weapons as well as on textiles.

There is no doubt that carpets are multifunctional products. In addition to their residential and decorative function as well as their spiritual significance, they are condensations of worldviews and faiths. Dependent on the varying fortunes of the weather and of good hunting, mainly nomadic societies were looking for a way to propitiate the circumstances in which they found themselves. Their continued existence and that of the entire clan depended on this. The work of peasants and craftsmen (weavers) was regarded in these cultures as “creation” that was based on the cosmic model. To a certain extent, the “Great Creation” was reflected at the human level. Like field cropping, weaving and tying follow a seasonal rhythm – the loom was set up in autumn, which marked the start of tillage. In winter, when plants grew below the soil, the fabric on the loom also “grew”. Removal of the fabric from the loom then occurred at the same time as the harvest in the fields. It is therefore clear that the connection between the earthly and the heavenly was the central effort in such spiritually permeated societies.

About 35,000 years before our era, carved symbols or successions of notches emerged in bones. On rocks, in caves and on objects we find spirals, rhombuses, straight lines and arrangements of dots. Even from the Eastern Alps (Val Camonica), such finds can be over 12,000 years old, while the sensational finds from the Anatolian Catalhöyük are about 10,000 years old. The graphisms (symbols between writing and pictures) which have been found extend to representational images of figures, animals or objects and had complex meanings that often can no longer be fully explained today. They could be hunting symbols, aids for incantation rituals, or part of sacred or magic rites. They always represent a connection between the real world of human life and a religious, cosmic superstructure. The real environment and world of objects are reflected in the symbols and patterns precisely as were the measures taken to propitiate higher powers.  The design vocabulary is never clear. Intermixtures and combinations of signs and symbols can always be detected due to processes that sometimes lasted for millennia. Religions such as Islam and Christianity are not the only sources of spiritual potentials. Most of the earlier pagan concepts have been preserved. Although they have lost their meanings today, they are integrated into the respective cultures as an integral part of collective communication. Hence the motif of the hand as a defensive symbol can already be found in cave paintings dating back to the earlier Stone Age but also attained pivotal significance in the religious symbolism of the Mediterranean. As the “Hand of Fatima”, the daughter of the Prophet, it is present in all the Islamic regions. In Morocco, it was painted with defensive and protective connotations on the walls and doors of the houses – Jews called them the “Hand of God” while eastern Christians referred to them as the “Hand of Mary”. The symbol of the hand, which brings happiness and blessings, is transformed into a five-pointed star in the Moroccan national flag and connects the hand with the linear symbol of the rhombus, which in turn can mean fertility and femininity as well as the mystical number five – four corner points and the imaginary centre. Above the centre, the axis that connects the earthly with the heavenly rises in a vertical direction.

Weaving is a spiritual act in the moment, while fabric on the other hand is basically an expression of the earthly. Its lines are literally laid along the horizontal axis. The vertical emerges in the religious-spiritual or imaginary context. Hence the object (carpet) receives essential aspects of its reality at the meta level.

What seems archaic and alien and therefore exotic and attractive to us today is part of a communication with the supernatural that has undergone transformation through the millennia –  it is the protocol of the effort made to propitiate the divine, as it were.

Günther Holler-Schuster

The transformation, mutation of and break with precedents has been one of the recurring fundamental principles of creative art since time immemorial. For it was points of friction within established structures which made paradigm shifts and development possible in the first place. Art, in particular, has developed means and ways of changing itself and society that go far beyond Kant’s “disinterested pleasure”. Thus, according to Erwin Ringel, the primary responsibility for the required process of transforming civilization into culture rests with art. An even more pertinent question arises as to whether art itself is a kind of metamorphosis, an act of transformation, when colour meets canvas, material meets wall, or an object meets space, in an unpredictable, controlled, random or composed, artistic process of freedom. This year, in cooperation with STYRIARTE, Galerie Reinisch Contemporary picks up on the former’s theme: “Transformed” and, in this exhibition, examines different mechanisms of metamorphosis in art by offering examples of eleven international positions.

Manuela Schlossinger

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARGRIET SMULDERS
Schloss Kalsdorf, Kalsdorf 1, 8262 Ilz 

OPENING on 1st of October 2021 at 3 PM

Exhibition 2nd and 3rd of October and 8. – 10. October 2021 and on appointment

Because of the current Covid situation a registration for visiting the exhibition is necessary.

Please call 0043 699 123 814 22 or write us an email hr@reinisch-graz.com

It’s easy to go into rhapsodies when it comes to classic still life painting. Whether they come from Holland, Spain, Italy or France, from the 17th or 20th century, these images are symbols of vitality and hedonism. At the same time, they are masterful works in which the painters showcased their prowess. They were always expensive, symbols of elevated taste and highly enlightening. At the height of earthly pleasures, they warn us of the impermanence of things. A flower often only holds its magnificence for a few hours before it becomes a sorry sight and, if it’s lucky, a fruit or vegetable, but usually dies and falls to the ground. Ever since the 17th century, vanitas works have served as very opulent reminders that our time down here is finite. But we have also learned to find beauty in decay and mould – in states of putrefaction. The entire arc of life up until death is inscribed in the still life. It is a meditation on life and death.

Following the impetus set by still life painting, Margriet Smulders applies the principles of painting to photography in her work. She condenses the sensual potential of the visual into almost unbearable passion. The artist works meticulously on the staging of her photos, all of which depict real-life arrangements without any digital alteration. And it’s not just the flowers and other fruits of the earth that are carefully selected and made to interact in a variety of interesting ways. Substances such as coloured milk, water or smoke enhance the material element of her work. The lighting, a central element of photography, allows for and even emphasises additional moods and creates space. The surreal dreamscapes we fly through in these pictures make us feel like those heavenly beings who float lightly clad through the baroque ceilings, peeking out from behind columns and forming parts of the pastoral scene. Eastern cultures influenced by Islam believe the entire garden is a paradise, while in Japan’s ikebana, shaped by the teachings of Zen, the focus is on the linear nature of the plants or the branches and stems. The western tradition almost exclusively favours the flowers. They are the reward for growth and are the source of the beholder’s momentary joy. For the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, flowers were the sex organs of the plants, which, botanically speaking, they actually are. For Margriet Smulders, they form a floral ocean – the primordial sea in which beauty and pleasure culminate.

The Reinisch Contemporary gallery is showing a representative selection of the opulent work of the Dutch photographer Margriet Smulders at Kalsdorf Castle. Nestled in a bucolic landscape, the setting of this country manor further accentuates the lush character of the exhibition.

Günther Holler-Schuster

Hubert Schmalix, intrepid protagonist of the ‘wild youth’ art movement, celebrates his 60^th birthday. An occasion he chooses to mark with a special exhibition of never-before-seen large format paintings in his hometown of Graz, Austria. To be precise, at Reinisch Contemporary, the gallery of his long-standing friend and early collector, Helmut Reinisch.

With COLOUR RAIN AT THE BAMBOO GROVE, Schmalix celebrates both a round birthday and a new series of paintings: his ‘bamboo paintings’ deal with the plant as an epitome of exotic lifestyles; as an icon of the modern art and design canon. The seeming simplicity of the motif leads the eye of the observer straight to the delicacy of painting itself. Colouring and brush stroke almost entirely absorb the motif, or rather, the narrative content.

COLOUR RAIN AT THE BAMBOO GROVE encompasses the latest works by the seminal L.A.-based artist, who earned international recognition in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a trailblazer of Austrian contemporary art. Incredible colouring, new visual themes and an insistent variety characterise his current work, in which the influence of his American surroundings and his asiaphile collector’s passion come together. This passion turns his paintings into fascinating, fragmentary glimpses into his universe.

Curator Günther Holler-Schuster about COLOUR RAIN AT THE BAMBOO GROVE:

“Everything in the paintings of Hubert Schmalix appears decelerated, diagrammed or simplified, and opens up the concentrated gaze to the act of painting. Through the means of quasi-serial painting – as an added element – he achieves the transformation of the image concept from mimetic to abstract. The nudes, as well as the recently created bamboo paintings, never pursue the goal of representing reality. Rather, they are small fragments of the seemingly endless possibilities of image creation.”

As in his other motifs, wich range from nudes, houses and Christ figures to interiors and flowers, Schmalix uses the sensuality of colour in his bamboo paintings to create sensations in the mundane, in the non-descript. What bestows his paintings with their unmistakable character is the transformation of a reality we all assume to know, but which does not exist as such.

Press Release

14th of April – 6th of May

The garden metaphor is one of the central topoi of the Oriental rug. Material livelihood and the promise of paradise fuse and condense into notions of nature and paradise; in the garden. The rug’s multiple functional contexts let us perceive it as both an object of daily use as well as of decoration, as image or as a symbol of cosmological order. The ‘special place’ designated by a carpet is a sign of the relationship between humans and nature or Creation. The geography of carpet cultures is marked by the barrenness of landscapes. The contrast between fertile, lush oases and life threatening, monotonous deserts and steppes, as well as the impassable mountainous zones, is an essential force, which determines the lives and thoughts of people there.

As an expression of anthropocentricity, nature, or rather landscape, becomes a carpet. Carpets in living spaces are akin to humans turning landscapes into a manageable reality. The barrenness of the landscape turns the carpet into an emblem of vitality. The Quran describes gardens as a sign of divine action, as a ‘vivification of dead soil’ – a special place, like the carpet.

The traditional Persian garden, which dates back to pre-Islamic antiquity, has spread all over the Islamic world. It is essentially a rectangular site with waterways divided into four or more sections or beds. In the middle of the site, depending on the size of the garden, lies a pavilion or a platform from where one can survey the plants and sink into contemplation. That the carpet lends itself to imagery of gardens or of paradise is self-evident: knotting and weaving, as well as the laying down of the carpet, are symbolic for the act of creation. ‘Garden carpets’ and ‘paradise carpets’ are fixed patterns, which have always codetermined carpet culture.

In this exhibition, Reinisch Contemporary follows the development of the connection between nature, landscape, paradise and garden with carpets and exemplifies this in a presentation of selected Iranian nomadic rugs. These ‘Gabbehs’, originating from the province of Fars and produced purely for personal use, captivate with their sweeping abstraction and intensive colouring. Symbols and patterns trace their roots back to the shamanistic pre-Islamic era. Vitality and growth are often seen as synonymous with gardens in this context. A geometrical basic structure echoes waterways and flowerbeds in schematic forms. In nomad tents, carpets thus play a primary role. In the absence of fixed walls and floors it creates a place of quietude, protects from view and climatic variability and transports an artificial interference with the notion of nature.

Western-occidental culture also subjugates nature to a process of condensation, namely abstraction and stylisation. From landscape painting via land art to environmental art, one can detect a twofold development: on the one hand, image-formation of nature and, on the other, the human need to be creative – to equal Creation. Both share the construction of a reality that bundles and compacts laws of nature, cosmological concepts and religious beliefs.

Günther Holler-Schuster

FRANCIS BACON, HERBERT BRANDL, ERWIN BOHATSCH, HELMUT FEDERLE, KATHARINA GROSSE, MARTIN KIPPENBERGER, ALFRED KLINKAN, JIRÍ KOLÁR, OTTO MUEHL, FRITZ PANZER, A.R. PENCK, ANTON PETZ, JOSEF PILLHOFER, ARNULF RAINER, DANIEL RICHTER, HUBERT SCHMALIX, CHRISTOPH SCHMIDBERGER, RICHARD SERRA, THOMAS STIMM, LEVENTE SZÜCS, FRANZ WEST

Opening friday, 17. 11. 2023, 7 pm, Hauptplatz 6, Graz
Introduction: Manuela Schlossinger

The group exhibition PAPER WORKS! at Reinisch Contemporary focuses on the medium of paper itself and presents works by 21 artists who have used its materiality in a variety of ways.
Paper is an important carrier material for many artists. You not only use it to prepare and sketch work, but also deal with this material in principle. Paper has the great advantage that it can not only be used as a surface for painting, but can also be used to cover large spaces. You can make sculptures and objects with paper just as you can make a painting or graphic on it. That’s what makes this material so incredibly exciting.

Information and freely retrievable knowledge shape today’s life in an information society, which provides effortless access not just to current events, but also to the wisdom and know-how of past generations and ages. For artists who – as a result of a century of transgressions and paradigm shifts, the rise of media art and a return to the canvas – find themselves facing sheer limitless freedoms, this represents both an opportunity and a challenge. In the possible awareness of current developments and expressions of past decades, artists are developing very different strategies to realise their ideas.

Martin Kippenberger, Franz West and Erwin Wurm left the normative enclosure of art history in the 1980s, in order to irritate with subversive ambiguity and polysemy.

Herbert Brandl celebrates the creative act in an eruption of compressed energy, in the form of gestural-explosive painting. Time, continuity and precision, on the other hand, in innumerable steps, are the means with which Irina and Marina Fabrizius capture light. Time plays an equally important role in Edelgard Gerngross’ works, which are reminiscent of display cabinets. After all, they are the outcome of a labour-intensive process, which leads to a multi-layered, colour-saturated model of the world.

The negation of physical beauty in advertising and media, by means of distorting photographs beyond recognition, is the focus of the shown works by Eva Schlegel; while Christian Gasser provides an unadorned realistic glimpse of this subject by tearing down clichéd façades. Welded into rigid metal, Othmar Krenn used his own body as a medium, to highlight the relationship between found (natural) and created (cultural) form.

Dirk Meinzer’s subtle flower graphics use bees’ wings as form-giving elements; an utilisation of natural materials, which emanates simple perfection, yet also extracts all meaning from life. In Martin Roth’s work, it is nature itself, which creates. As an initial fuse, the artist generates situations in which displaced nature conquers spaces in unexpected urban settings. Clemens Hollerer reworks realistic impulses into objects, which apply their own yardstick to space. The compound into elements of urban space is heightened through the contrast of perfection in surfaces and finishing, and partly splintered ends.

Whether running on new media, citing epoch-referential side blows or escaping the normative enclosure of art, the shown works offer an exemplary insight into the diverse strategies and approaches of selected artists from Austria and Germany.

Manuela Schlossinger

There is no such thing as ONE single form of freedom. Only the relation to individuals defines whether it can be gained or used, or even foregone: This has always been one of the most important issues worth pondering.

Philosophy, politics, law and art – each field has developed an array of specific concepts in this regard. Artists have their own specific ways of responding to attempts to deprive them of their freedom, or they use such stratagems to subject art exclusively to their own specific rules. This exhibition spans an array of art ranging from socially critical and necessarily subversive works in Austrian art during the 1960s to an exploration of Joseph Beuys’ constructive statements which managed to unify life and art. It concludes with the different mechanisms that contemporary artists have developed in order to use the freedom they have been given in their art and in order to (re)act to, in, or through society.

Manuela Schlossinger