Was an art created in Salzburg
02/12/22 This Mona Lisa looks like climate activists have glued themselves to her and has now gone through some cleaning processes. Of course it can’t be. Not only because Leonardo da Vinci has no place in the Trakl house.
The cigarette butts and the crumbs of cinders that Manfred Grübl has on this desolate Mona Lisa also reveal: There are completely different proportions involved. The lady from the Louvre probably had to serve as an ashtray motif, so it was actually badly abused – if not by environmental friends.
A striking work of many. Acknowledging even the most representative works is an impossibility in the face of a show that contains so many different things. In the State Gallery Art in the Traklhaus these months are about the state’s art acquisitions since 2020. Such acquisitions are a not unimportant funding channel. In the Corona years, more money was made available than before to help the workers in the country. That is the reason that you can now show so many paintings, photographic works, sculptures that there is enough for two presentations. The first expires at the end of next week (December 10th), the second will be before Christmas, on December 21st. opened.
The Salzburg state government has been collecting works of art since the 1950s. A three-person expert jury has been responsible for this since 1995, always for three years. Most recently, these were the recently resigned director of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Thorsten Sadowsky, the former director of the art association and current director of the Lentos in Linz, Hemma Schmutz, and the former president of the Salzburg art association, Elfried Wimmer-Repp. Also people who have a good view of the variety of art in Salzburg. Mirroring them, that’s what it’s all about. Incidentally, since 2018 the Museum der Moderne has taken care of the state’s art collection, i.e. it has taken it over to the new warehouse in Guggenthal. Loan traffic will be reorganized. Many of these purchases end up in the offices of politicians and state officials.
Where to start and where to end, even with so many different things? When it comes to size, one has to start with Bernhard Gwiggner’s paraphrase of Thorak’s statue of Paracelsus in the Kurgarten. Where Torah is a cubist replica in original size, but made of styrofoam blocks. The herbarium boxes by Annelies Senfter are very small. fur The attempts ask she dried leaves from a garden that belonged to Alma and Arnold Rosé. Text references to the fate of these Jewish celebrities from the Viennese cultural scene were also placed in the glass boxes.
The show is really suitable for an anthology of contemporary Salzburg art. Together with the second episode, pretty much all the names that are valid here and sometimes also nationally will be brought together. Irene Andessner has copied herself into a series of life-size stone statues in a photographic work. As an exotic fisherwoman, she stands next to them on a balustrade, a very special kind of Vienna searchlight.
A lot of photography is together. Angelika Wienerroither opted for utopia arguably inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. Thomas Hörl, who has been using Pinzgauer Tresterer motifs for years, also does this in his montage marc rese. A male custom in LBTQ times? Reinhard Mlineritsch has photographed ruins, old buildings that have somehow been extended and somehow spoiled. Lüftlmalerei can still be seen on the facade of a former farmhouse in Liefering. Another Fotohof artist, Kurt Kaindl, looked around his own institution and offers in his series Where the pictures live unusual motifs from the slide archive of the Fotohof. Gretl Thuswaldner went with the camera in search of construction details at Salzburg Airport. Not a little spectacular if you have an eye for excerpts.
Tired? Friedrich Rücker’s three-seater bench, roughly cobbled together from leftover bentwood, makes you think about whether communication should be encouraged or prevented.