Heimo Zobernig

The Galleria Civica di Modena is proud to announce the upcoming exhibition of Heimo Zobernig (1958, Mauthen, Carinthia). This is the first one-man show in an Italian museum to be held by the Austrian artist, and it will open on 20th April at 12pm, in the exhibition space of Palazzina dei Giardini in corso Canalgrande, Modena. The Heimo Zobernig exhibition, curated by Cornelia Lauf, an independent curator and artist’s book editor, is organised and sponsored by the Galleria Civica di Modena and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena.

The Austrian artist, a reference point in the European arts scene, will present two projects in Modena: the installation of a "blue box" especially created for the exhibition spaces of the Palazzina dei Giardini, as well as the installation of two of his artist’s books.

Zobernig debuted as an artist working for the theatre and the performing arts. Ever since the mid-‘80s, Zobernig has been producing paintings and sculptures of an abstract geometric nature, aimed essentially at thematising the figurative language. The object-based character of his sculptures shows his personal sense of poetics aimed at reducing forms through the potential offered by abstraction. With almost scientific precision, Zobernig analyses the premises of artistic creation and carries forward his own critical analysis of the potential of figurative art through a range of expressive media.

In Modena, Zobernig intervenes on the very architectural space of the Palazzina, laying out a symmetrical display structure. In the right wing of the ancient building, he will install one of his typical "blue boxes", (3m x 4m x 10m), especially designed for the event. The Modenese “blue box” is a structure made up of steel girders, ones normally used in scaffolding, the inside of which is covered with blue industrial netting. A video is then projected onto the back wall of the “blue box”. There is a sort of auditorium to be found in the room before the video-installation, with 40 white seats and screens standing on tripods, some with a white material screen, the other black.

The "blue box" itself is a device used in television production. It creates an optical illusion which consists of the background being replaced with other material, for when coloured blue, it disappears completely when covered by a layer of other video during the editing stage. In this manner, a negative-positive space is formed, and the invisible is rendered visible.

The other two rooms of the Palazzina will house first a video-installation, then two series of two books: Atlas and Die Kunst der Enzyklopädie. Atlas is a series of 30 collages of images taken from scientific magazines and geography texts, abstract figures, maps, diagrams and graphs. The book thus highlights issues linked to the concept of scale and dimensional relationships, questioning the ability of symbols and signs to represent the actual substance of reality.

Die Kunst der Enzyklopädie, created in collaboration with the Austrian poet and writer Ferdinand Schmatz, was presented for the first time as a limited edition by Artelier Graz at the Galerie Peter Pakesch in Graz in 1988. Through a wide range of texts and illustrations, the written and figurative languages are examined in terms of communicative media, along with the reciprocal interrelations that run between them, their final effects and their various differences.

The exhibition is accompanied by a portfolio containing three artist’s books, designed by Heimo Zobernig and produced by the Galleria Civica di Modena in collaboration with Christophe Boutin and Onestarpress, an artists’ book publisher based in Paris.

Heimo Zobernig