Because of the current noticeable affinity towards the use and recontextualization of found material in the work of many artists active in international art discourse the curatorial team of the FOTOGALERIE WIEN, together with art historian and curator Petra Noll, has developed APPROPRIATION as the special focus for this year. The conceptual basis is provided by the Appropriation Art of the 1970s and 1980s in which artists conceptually appropriated pre-existing art works. The tripartite series of exhibitions takes the subject a little further and presents photo and video artists who are involved with found footage material from very different contexts or employ strategies of re-enactment in order to open up new perspectives and pictorial realities. Over and above the central themes of Appropriation Art – authorship and originality – the concern here is with issues of representation and perception, with the politics of social and cultural confrontations as well as with history, memory and identity. In the context of APPROPRIATION the mediums of photography and film which, per se, point in the direction of the past, offer an additional level for reflection.
(textual support: Petra Noll)
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15. May 2012 — 9. June 2012
“What do pictures represent?” is the central question of the first exhibition, QUESTIONING THE IMAGE, with eight international artists who work with found footage material. These found photographic and filmic images are no longer treated as documents of their time but, using visual, textual and audio manipulation are so removed from their origins and changed by recontextualization that their meaning and aesthetic representation is called into question and new meanings made possible. [...] -
4. September 2012 — 29. September 2012
The second exhibition in the series dealing with APPROPRIATION is presenting art projects based on the strategy of RE-ANACTMENTS The artists represented in the show transcend the traditional concept of re-enacting stagings that already exist – e.g. in historical paintings/Tableaux Vivants – as authentically as possible. [...] -
18. December 2012 — 26. January 2013
In the third exhibition on the subject of APPROPRIATION, with the secondary title SOCIO-CULTURAL CONDITIONING, five artists from Western and Eastern Europe will be presenting works based on found footage material and concerned with questions of social and cultural politics. Their sources are to be found in archives and the media as well as in scientific and literary publications.[...]