Mirrors would do well to reflect more before sending back images (Juliette Blightman)

Sulzbacher Petermichl

11.03. - 25.03.2011


exhibition view



When asked why she‘d chosen to become a journalist, the parrot was known to cock her head a half inch to the right and pause for a moment before repeating the question. „Why did I choose to become a journalist? Well, the easy answer is fairly obvious. Perfect recall is something I was born with, but I guess what really drives me is the money.
That, and the free booze.“
It killed her to follow this with, „I was just joking about the money.“
The paper she worked at was called „The Eagle“, and she wrote for the Tempo section, which was later renamed Lifestyles and was now titled simply Living. (….) She wanted an opportunity to show her chops, and finally got her break when a potbellied pig took over as director of the local art museum. The Eagle wanted something simple – three hundred words, tops- but the parrot thought differently and scheduled a long lunch.
Her guest arrived on time, and, after ordering, they got down to business. „So,“ the parrot began, „it‘s a long way from Ho Chi Minh City to the much- coveted director‘s chair of a noted museum. I‘d like you to reminisce about the journey a little.“
„I‘m sorry,“ the pig said, „but I‘ve never been to Ho Chi Minh City.“
„But you are from that region, are you not?“
„No,“ the pig told her. „Not at all.“
The parrot ran her fat black tongue over the ragged edge of her upper beak. „I don‘t mean to contradict you,“ she said, „but I‘ve done a little leg-work, and it seems that you‘re officially registered with your health-care provider as a Vietnamese potbellied pig. So let‘s turn our thoughts eastward, shall we, and talk about your past.“
„Technically, yes, I am a Vietnamese potbellied pig,“ the museum director said. „But that‘s just a silly formality.
The fact is that I was born in this country, as were my parents, and their parents before them.“
„I see,“ the parrot said, and she scratched the word „self- hating“ in her notepad. „So how will your ethnicity reflect itself in regard to our museum? Can we expect to see more Oriental art? A pricey new Ming Wing perhaps?
Some big `Treasures of the Emperor` extravaganza?“
„Nothing‘s planned,“ the pig said.
„But you wouldn‘t rule it out?“
„Well, no, not completely, but —“
„That‘s all I wanted to know,“ the parrot said, and at that moment their lunch arrived.

(„The Parrot and the Potbellied Pig“ in David Sedaris: „Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk“, p.119 ff. Little Brown. London 2010)


1.) left: „Sheephead“, right: „Dickhead“, C-Prints, 2011 2.) „I really thought there was chemistry between us. I can sing a rainbow“ (Indigo, Krappwurzel & Kurkuma) 3.) left: „Depends on how you look at it (the bird video)“ & right: „Depends on how
you look at it (3D)“, 2011 4.) exhibition view: „Conversation. Or was it conversation? What are you looking at?“, mirrorglass & „Color crisis – color analysis (spring & winter), all 2011 5.) „Conversation. Or was it conversation? What are you looking at?“, mirrorglass, 2011 6.) detail view: „Nimble, couchtable, very nimble“ steel, cottonwood, mirrorglass, 2011.



ANAGLYPH IMAGES are used to provide a stereoscopic 3D effect, when viewed with glasses where the two lenses are different (usually chromatically opposite) colors, such as RED and CYAN. Images are made up of two color layers, superimposed, but offset with respect to each other to produce a depth effect.
Usually the main subject is in the center, while the foreground and background are shifted laterally in opposite directions. The picture contains two differently filtered colored images, one for each eye. When viewed through the „color coded“ „anaglyph glasses“, they reveal an integrated stereoscopic image. The visual cortex of the brain fuses this into perception of a three dimensional scene or composition.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaglyph_image)


JULIETTE BLIGHTMAN
born in 1980 in Farnham, lives and works in London, graduated in Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, 2003. In 2009 BLIGHTMAN showed the piece „mirrors would do well to reflect more before sending back images“ in her solo show „TOMORROW THEN“ at HOTEL in London (17th Sep–25th Oct 2009).
The subtext read:
net curtain (in entrance), borrowed from artist’s kitchen, chair, on loan from Dirk Bell, mirror, on loan from Heather and Adam.
(http://www.generalhotel.org/498/1)
„In 2008, as part of ‘Nought to Sixty’, the six-month series of exhibitions by emerging artists at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, Blightman placed a fishbowl – complete with water and goldfish – alongside a pot plant and an apple on a window sill in the gallery. Titled please water the plant and feed the fish (2008), Blightman asked her brother, Charlie, to come in every day at 3pm and do as the title of the work demanded – which he did, restructuring his day in order to accommodate her request. This modest performance was an homage to the commonplace repetitions that can, conversely, lend meaning and structure to our lives.“
Jennifer Higgie in: Frieze Magazine, Issue 126, October 2009


views: „Nimble, couchtable, very nimble“ steel, cottonwood, mirrorglass, 2011 & „I will call it friday“, videoclips, 2010/11




Herbst 2006. Wir stellen zwei Blitze auf, scheiteln uns die Haare in dieselbe Richtung. Wir wollen grundsätzlich für die Kamera gleich aussehen. Visuelle „Stille Post“, die serielle Aneignung der Mimik des Anderen wird zum fotografisch festgehaltenen Nachäffen.
Mit „Ich bin okay, du bist okay“, einer insgesamt 22-teiligen Portraitserie beginnen wir unsere Zusammenarbeit als Sulzbacher | Petermichl.
Seitdem beschäftigen wir uns mit der Verzahnung unserer jeweiligen ästhetischen Zugänge mit der sozialen Welt: Bewusst oder unbewusst streben alle Menschen nach Perfektionierung oder zumindest Optimierung der eigenen Lebensumstände, und scheitern daran grandios und täglich. In unseren Videos, Fotos, Installationen, Objekten und Performances wählen wir jene Orte, die mit entsprechendem Pathos belegt sind, rekonstruieren das Streben nach Perfektion, empfinden das damit einhergehende Scheitern nach. Wir teilen eine gemeinsame, im Privatleben ausgebildete Weltanschauung, die wir in unserer Zusammenarbeit in Frage stellen oder hinterfragen, ausstellen, bzw. zum Weiterdenken anbieten wollen.



Georg Petermichl
geboren 1980 in Linz
bis 2007 Studium der Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft an der Universität Wien
bis 2010 Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Klasse für Kunst und Fotografie, Prof. Eva Schlegel / Matthias Herrmann
Ausstellungen: 2006 ich bin okay, du bist okay (AUTO – Raum für Kunst, Wien)
2007 dschin dobre:dak.dschenkuije,dobre wischiem (austriacki forum kultury, Warschau, Polen) 2008 Liebe – ist (Fotogalerie Wien), Dialogue (La Fatoria Santiago de Chile, Chile), Co-Redakteur von AIDS. A Reader (Hg. Akademie der bildenden Künste, Wien) / Präsentation im Rahmen des Monats der Fotografie (Atelierhaus der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Wien)
2009 manchmal delta (Haus an der Kaiserbadschleuse / organisiert von Anna Barfuss)
2010 making you feel goodbye (academie voor de schonen kunsten, Antwerpen) Körper Codes (Museum der Moderne, Salzburg)



Martin Sulzbacher
geboren 1980, Linz
bis 2005 Studium an der Universität der angewandten Kunst, Modeklasse Raf Simons
seit 2005 Women’s Designer Jil Sander, Mailand
Ausstellungen
2007-10 Akademie der bildenden Künste, Prof. Hans Scheirl (Klasse für kontextuelle Malerei)
2004 Co-Gründer des Modelabels “House of the very island’s…”
2006 ich bin okay, du bist okay AUTO – Raum für Kunst, Wien
2007 dschin dobre:dak.dschenkuije,dobre wischiem austriacki forum kultury, Warschau, Polen open call 2 Plattform Quelle, Wien i queerelanti, galleria neon – campobase, Bolognia
2009 manchmal delta (Haus an der Kaiserbadschleuse / organisiert von Anna Barfuss)
2010 Körper Codes (Museum der Moderne, Salzburg)



im Rahmen der Ausstellung:
Maria Giovanna Drago „Intervention“ & Petermichl Sulzbacher „Der Frühling“, Videoscreening
Manfred Hubmann „Wuuu“ & Ida Britta Petrelius „sky, land and body“

«Archive 2011