The work of Cologne-based artist Jürgen Klauke has played a pivotal role in the development and history of performance and body art since the early 1970s. By questioning gender roles through his performative acts in front of the camera, Klauke disrupts our notions of the self-portrait, by creating “social pictures” that incorporate both reflections of the other and the gaze that takes them in, containing social and psychological distortions, sometimes carried to the point of the grotesque.
The exhibition in Vienna will present historical works from the 1970s and 1980s as well as the sixteen-meter-high Schlachtfelder(2010) tableau, which is composed of 144 photographs addressing absence and presence, inside and outside, beauty and ugliness. These dualities of life and death have long been a conceptual counterpoint in the work of Jürgen Klauke.
Artist
Jürgen Klauke (DE)Michael Scott Hall
Michael Scott Hall studied Photography/Theory at Cranbrook Academy of Art (Detroit) and currently works as an independent curator. Hall founded Chicago Project Room (with Daniel Hug) in Chicago and later in Los Angeles (1996–2002). In 2003, he opened Galerie Michael Hall in Vienna and in 2007 the Contemporary Bar, a space for artists and events. Since 2008 Hall’s curatorial focus is on temporary interventions including projects for KÖR (Art in Public Space) and INSTITUT (Vienna). Hall has written texts about art and photography for Camera Austria and various magazines and artists/museum catalogs.
Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman
Seilerstätte 7, 1010 Wienwww.galeriethoman.com