»Hanging of Traitors in Effigie (Part 2)« bei Pencil Factory, New York

Ausstellungstext:

How big is the impact we ascribe to an artwork?

Jean-Pierre Norblin de La Gourdaine’s Hanging of Traitors depicts a scene from eighteenth-century Poland during the Kościuszko Uprising. The rebels, having fled, were sentenced to death in absentia and were subsequently hung in effigy on the gallows. This painting stands for the poles that mark the boundaries of representation in visual art. On the one hand, there is a certain amusing irony in the notion that a painting, which, after all, consists only of paint, canvas, and frame, could actually be regarded as a de facto substitute for that which it portrays. On the other hand, the violence done to the artworks themselves is disturbing because it is clearly evident that the vitriol is directed at the subject matter.

The presentation at the Pencil Factory is the second chapter in a trilogy of exhibitions. Hanging of Traitors in Effigie shows how artists and viewers respectively approach the notion of representation. Do we, the audience, have such imperturbable faith in the unambiguous correlation between the subject and the image? Just how much fiction and how much imagination do we entrust to the artists in the practice of their craft? Do the producers of artworks speak only for themselves, based on their own sphere of experience, or do they regard their works as representative? If so, to what purpose and for whom? And how do we, in the role of the beholder, communicate with the works? Which identity do we ascribe to the works by our viewing practice?

The three parts of the exhibition trilogy will be shown between May and October 2019 at Belvedere 21 in Vienna, at the Pencil Factory, NYC, and at MAUVE, Vienna.