VIENNA.- The installation developed by Gerwald Rockenschaub for the room containing the Beethoven Frieze at the
Secession allows visitors to perceive this work from unusual perspectives and new viewpoints. His sculptural intervention allows the frieze, that runs round the room at a height of between three and five meters, to be viewed at eye level for the first time. The two works, Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze and Rockenschaub’s Plattform, enter into dialog on equal terms. While the platform is functional, in its quality as an object it also asserts itself as an autonomous work. “Up to a certain point,” says the artist, “the platform is also supposed to appear in this setting as a work of art, not just as purely functional architecture.”
Plattform displays many features that are characteristic of Rockenschaub’s artistic idiom: standard commercial materials, symbolic minimalism, monochrome surfaces. “Color,” the artist says, “is pretty much the most minimal means of heightening object character. I dip into the paint bucket with few inhibitions, in a childishchildlike way.” With his platform at the Secession, he also continues a series of installations begun in the late 1980s that use podiums, benches, curtains, or partitions to guide visitors around the exhibition, altering modes of perception and recoding the social and architectural space. “It is always a respectful approach, he emphasizes, “never an ironic commentary.”
Gerwald Rockenschaub (born 1952 in Linz) lives and works in Berlin.
Selected solo shows // 2012: Embrace Romance/Remodeled, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg; 2011: If I ever had the chance again, I'd probably do the same, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg; 2010: Gone is back again, House of Art Ceske Budejovice, Budweis; 2009: Promise vs. Reality, Villa Stuck, Munich. Selected groups shows // 2012: Utopie Gesamtkunstwerk, Belvedere, 21er Haus, Vienna; 2011: Carte Blanche a John Armleder. All of the above, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; 2010: Bilder über Bilder, MUMOK, Vienna; Amsterdam – Berlin, De Service Garage, Amsterdam; maximal pleasure, Souterrain, Berlin; 2009: Don’t Follow Me I’m Lost Too, Substitut, Berlin; Wiener Musterzimmer, Orangerie - Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna; Spacioux, Lambretto Art Project, Milan; 2007: Documenta 12, Kassel
