Lot 1 | Heimo Zobernig | Untitled

The dismantling of modernism

As one of Austria's most internationally renowned contemporary artists, Heimo Zobernig took part in the Documenta in 1992 (IX) and 1997 (X) and represented Austria at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. His artistic work encompasses sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, performance and architectural interventions. Zobernig engages with the concepts of non-objectivity, which were represented in relevant art movements of the 20th century, such as geometric abstraction, Russian Constructivism and the De Stijl movement. He addresses their rigid guidelines with a correspondingly reduced formal language, whereby his works often subtly and cryptically undermine the specifications with their handcrafted character, model-like construction and the use of simple, inexpensive materials – be it cardboard or plywood. Zobernig analyses the art historical canon, continuously interrogating himself and attempting to reflect on his role in the mirror of tradition. Zobernig uses playful improvisation to dismantle modernism by taking up its formal principles of design, emptying them, systematically breaking them down and applying them freely to sculpture and language, art and forms of communication. By creating his own set of rules, such as a theory of colours, he generates elements for his works, which are used like building blocks for experimental setups.

Writing and Image

The typographic appearance and the extensive monochromatic colouring determine the composition of the image, in which the design forms of text and image intriguingly permeate each other. The characters emerge weakly from the intense colour of the painting ground like stencils. The literal designation ‘Indigo’ in the picture field causes the concrete realities of the colour value on the one hand and the characters on the other to enter into a meaningful agreement, which, however, is not free of doubt.