For the Austrian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale, commissioner Yilmaz Dziewior selected Heimo Zobernig, an artist who has not only influenced the art scene in his own country like almost no other, but is also among the most successful positions in international art discourse and exhibitions.
Heimo Zobernig’s work is marked by its high level of precision in terms of both form and content. He often succeeds in involving the observer both intellectually and sensually at the same time. His spectrum ranges from drawing and painting through installation and sculpture to video and spatial settings of a practical nature. He exposes the mechanisms of the art system, addresses hierarchies and examines concepts both for their concrete and metaphorical meanings. All the more impressive is how he succeeds in negotiating these issues in the form of what might almost be called classical, apparently autonomous canvases and sculptures, or by means of concrete architectural interventions and installations.
Heimo Zobernig will skillfully combine both approaches for the Austrian Pavilion. Both spatial intervention and independent work of art will enter into a combination as equal, reciprocally commentating elements of his Venice contribution. No less than the concrete room, the situation of the Biennale itself is a starting point for Heimo Zobernig’s deliberations. How can a meaningful contribution be made in an environment based on nation-state representations and in which each voice competes for the most attention? What effects make sense in such a context? These questions also play a role in Heimo Zobernig’s concept for Venice. And the Austrian Pavilion, with its equally classical and modern language of form, offers an ideal space for this purpose.
Austria Pavilion
Heimo Zobernig
9 May – 22 November, 2015
Pavilion at Giardini
Artist: Heimo Zobernig
Curated by Yilmaz Dziewior
www.austrianpavilion.at
Image Credits:
Portrait Heimo Zobernig, Yilmaz Dziewior by Georg Petermichl
