TOBIAS REHBERGER

      Young mothers and other delicate questions
      Wed, 29.06.2011 - Sun, 25.09.2011
      Large Hall
      Curator: Tobias Rehberger

      TOBIAS REHBERGER

      Young mothers and other delicate questions
      Wed, 29.06.2011 - Sun, 25.09.2011

      Large Hall

      In 2009, Tobias Rehberger was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennial. The Essl Museum is now devoting the first Austrian solo exhibition to the international shooting star. >Junge Mütter und andere heikle Fragen< (Young Mothers and Other Delicate Questions) will be on show at the Essl Museum’s main hall from 29 June until 25 September 2011.
      For the exhibition entitled >Junge Mütter und andere heikle Fragen< at the main hall of the Essl Museum, Rehberger devised his own exhibition design: a combination of individual sculptures arranged in two groups, paintings on glass and two site-specific installations.

      Several completely new pieces from the series Handycapped Sculptures will be on show. What is unique about this series of abstract sculptures is the fact that each of them seems to have a flaw (water dripping out of them, parts that look as though something had broken off). Tobias Rehberger does this to explore, among other themes, the question of art and functionality. Can a sculpture also have an additional function besides being a work of art?

      The artist creates five new pieces for the Mütter series for the show at the Essl Museum. For these pieces, serving as models for a shelf, a dog house or a winding staircase, the museum’s shop offers certificates which authorise the buyer to build a copy of the respective object. The artist does not provide construction plans or any specific information on the materials to be used.

      In the Rotunda, which will be painted black, a lamp will be suspended from the ceiling which is linked to the artist’s studio via the Internet and will light up whenever the artist has turned the light on in his studio. This piece explores the themes of control and losing control and the influence of coincidence.

      The second site-specific piece will be created for the window band at the staircase leading up to the main hall. What may look like an abstract arrangement of colour fields at first glance turns out to be a binary clock. The installation consists of a large luminous surface consisting of three colours. The green section shows the hour, the magenta section blocks of ten minutes, and the light blue sections the individual minutes.

      Tobias Rehberger has been actively interested in art since the age of 15. At the age of 19 it became a serious career option for him. After moving to Frankfurt he enrolled at the Städelschule which had been restructured under the directorship of Kaspar König and studied with Martin Kippenberger and Thomas Bayrle. Today, Tobias Rehberger has his own chair for sculpture at the same university.

      For many years, Rehberger has been working at the intersection between art and design and has successfully taken up a discourse that started in the 19th century in the German-speaking area. Today, it is very difficult to give a precise definition of the term “design”, since the range of meanings covered by this fashionable term seems to be larger than ever.

      All the issues explored by Tobias Rehberger centre around the work of art: what is a work of art? Where does it come from and in which direction will it develop? What can it be, and what defines it? What differentiates it from something else? The artist deliberately toys with the context in which artwork is placed. He may install his work in bank buildings which, as he says, are functional structures firmly rooted in their definition, just like museums.

      Another important issue in Rehberger’s work is the question of authenticity and authorship. Again, he integrates methods and procedures taken from product design and creates objects fashioned from within the imagination of other people. By deliberately introducing aspects of product design, such as the drafting process or the aesthetic design of a surface in the context of art, Rehberger investigates the differences that arise also within the artistic context. He tries to change and expand traditional ways of looking at works of art in the classical art context.

      Exhibition management: Anna Szöke
      Tobias Rehberger1 / 3
      Exhibition view2 / 3
      Portrait Tobias Rehberger3 / 3

      Bookshop

      Tobias Rehberger

      Art book. German and English. 120 pages with numerous color images.

      Edition Sammlung Essl: Klosterneuburg 2011
      ISBN: 978-3-902001-62-7
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