Proof you can be funny in German - in art show at Hong Kong University
If there's one myth the curators behind this contemporary art exhibit want to debunk, it's that German speakers aren't funny.
DESIRING THE REAL: AUSTRIAN CONTEMPORARY ART
University Museum and Art Gallery
University of Hong Kong
If there's onemyth the curators behind this contemporary art exhibit want to debunk, it's that German speakers aren't funny.
Indeed, one of the takeaway pieces from the show is a short video by Hannes Zebedin, which was shot from the perspective of a dog. "The dog is brilliant," says Dr Florian Knothe, director of the University Museum and Art Gallery at the University of Hong Kong. "He is shown as a happy, jolly participant without knowing what is going on. He's a bystander without a very critical mind."
The footage, played out on a TV placed on the floor, shows a Viennese dog that has been brought along to a political protest, wagging its tail and weaving around the feet of participants. It's a playful commentary on how social movements can attract people to become involved regardless of whether their values are aligned with those of the crowd.
Originally commissioned by the Federal Chancellery of Austria in 2012, the exhibition had been on a 2½-year world tour before it arrived in Hong Kong for its East Asian premiere. Playful and serious in equal parts, it has brought together a diverse range of multimedia works from 25 Austrian contemporary artists.
Some works are a bit odd. A video by Turkish-born Nilbar Gures titled involves scenes of a woman doing a slow interpretative dance with her bra on backwards cut with shots of a lady on a swing having her leg layered in what looks like honey, as if she were the starting point for a lovely human sandwich.
Other works are bold political critiques, such as the landscape photographs by Margherita Spiluttini of alpine quarries — evoking all too familiar scenes of mankind's relentless efforts to ruin nature, and the shots by Franz Kapfer of a "politically incorrect" statue in Vienna that celebrates the Austro-Hungarian empire's vanquishing of Turkish invaders. Kapfer zooms in on the disconnected head of a Turkic soldier at Franz Joseph's boots.
"All art is political," says Knothe, who believes this idea to be far more accepted and inoffensive in Europe than Asia, although he says East Asians are catching up to the Western tradition of layering cultural products with political or social messages.
All the pieces are bound together under the nebulous theme of . They include a sculpture of a retro exercise bike that gives you an electric shock ("Art doesn't only have to be visual; it can appeal to other senses, too," says co-curator Bernhard Rehn, who has followed the show around), and a performance in which the artist wheels in a portable kitchen and asks spectators to help him make stew.
Artsy terminology aside, this is about how "reality" looks and feels different to everyone — and their dogs — and how the artists must try to "represent the real" truthfully but through artificial methods of reproduction. "What does reality mean to these 25 people?" asks Knothe, who is happy with the high quality of the art on view, while bemoaning politely that many modern artists tend to focus on producing interesting ideas more than technically impressive pieces.
The answer to his question is unclear, but one thing is: Austria — famed for bringing us Klimt, Kokoschka and the colourful postcard-perfect architectural oddities of Hundertwasser — appears as ever to be fertile ground for creative talent.
