MARKUS REDL: FLUSSMITTE

25 November 2021 - 5 February 2022
  • MARKUS REDL

    FLUSSMITTE
  • The title of the exhibition ‘FLUSSMITTE’ refers to the art book ‘Flussmitte Porträts der Dinge’ which was recently published by Markus Redl. It contains drawings made over five years (2015-2020). A large part of these drawings originates from the period of the first two lockdowns in 2020, during the pandemic of CoVID19 and its aftermath. They are documents of the time, and a journey in a confined space; one's own living space and the way to the grocery store, combined with texts, through which another journey takes place, without much spatial movement. In these cycles of drawings language, text, space are compressed, layered on top of and within each other. 

     

  • Installation View, Markus Redl, Flussmitte, 2021
  • UNTERLAND ZYKLUS I

    Markus Redl

    Der Unterland-Zyklus I, 2020
    ink, pencil, charcoal, typewriter, paper
    42 x 59.7 cm
    16 1/2 x 23 1/2 in
  • Installation View, Markus Redl, Flussmitte, 2021
  • Brecht Zyklus I & II

    Installtion View, Markus Redl, Flussmitte, 2021 showing Brecht Zyklus I & II

    Brecht Zyklus I & II

    The exhibition presents a selection of the various cycles of images. After the publication of the book ‘Flussmitte’, Redl started working directly on the follow-up volume Flussrand I. It started with extensive research on Bertolt Brecht, which resulted in the Brecht-Zyklen I and II, as well as Der Ring-Zyklus I. These works are based on questions regarding political and social measures in a society, which affect the individual as well as the whole community. Questions that naturally arise from situations in a pandemic, as well as from the consequences of climate change, which also affects the whole human community. The drawings incorporate text fragments from authors who were studied in the course of the research. (Aleida Assmann, Italo Calvino, Heinrich v. Kleist, Thomas Bernhard, Franz Kafka, Antonia Birnbaum, Heiner Müller, Andreas Reckwitz, Peter Weiss, Ilija Trojanow, and others). 

     

  • Markus Redl
    Brecht-Zyklus I, 2020
    ink, pencil, charcoal, pastell, paper
    95 x 71 cm
    37 3/8 x 28 in
  • BRECHT ZYKLUS I

    For the Brecht-Zyklus II), the Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent was rewritten several times. Colours were assigned to the actors’ voices, and the threads of their statements, in the form of lines, words written with a brush, were laid in and on top of each other, were linked, and gradually structured an area that increasingly turned structureless. In Brecht's Lehrstück (didactic drama), a few outstanding members o the community, the aviators, flew higher than anybody else. They have moved away from the community and then crashed to the ground. Now, the community has to decide whether to help them, since the crashed aviators ask for their help. The community negotiates and decides not to help. The value of the

    individual and the value of the community cannot be merged without friction and cannot easily be adapted to one another.

     

  • "
    Reverse_renewal and
    The past is unpredictable
    Things remain as they become
    Freak Out Have a Rest Freak Out

     

    Disagreement leads to the system of
    The majority vote
    Impeachable victimhood
    Flat learning curve

     

    We still must tear out the grass
    To keep it green
    Yesterday today tomorrow

     

    Nothing from me
    Stolen everything
    "

  • Markus Redl, Der Schopenhauer-Zyklus II, 2020, 12 sheets, ink, pencil, charcoal, typewritter, paper, 42 x 59 cm (16 1/2 x 23 1/4 in) total installation approx. 210 x 220 cm
  • Installation View, Markus Redl, Flussmitte, 2021
  • WENDEMITTEL I
    Markus Redl
    Stein 156–157 [Wendemittel] , 2021
    Bianco Carrara Marmor, Nero Belgio, Rosa Portogallo
    145 x 50 x 40 cm
    57 1/8 x 19 3/4 x 15 3/4 in

    WENDEMITTEL I

    In addition to drawings from his publication Flussmitte, stone sculptures complement the exhibition. Here, Redl's sculpture ‘Stein 156-157 [Wendemittel I]’ combines three types of European stone (from Italy, Belgium, and Portugal) in the form of a projectile on a tall, square pedestal. The explosive cap inscription EGAL meets its counterpart in the postament inscription ABER. EGAL ABER. ABER EGAL. The order of reading is unclear, the meaning of the other characters around the projectile body invented - whereby they are reminiscent of existing signs from various cultures and epochs. The mixture with characters, which are still in use today, reinforce the impression that they are real sign systems, data sets and messages. Their combination adds conjecture to cultural, spatial and temporal links. Just as ghosts used to arise from the past, they now arise from the future as well, writes Bertolt Brecht in "The Downfall of the Egotist, Johann Fatzer“. In this sense, this projectile could be a relic or a harbinger, could have originated from a great distance, spatial and temporal. 

     

  • Installation View, Markus Redl, Flussmitte, 2021
  • WENDEMITTEL II
    Markus Redl
    Stein 159-160 [Wendemittel II], 2021
    Bianco Carrara marble, Nero Belgio, Rosa Aurora
    120 x 60 x 30 cm
    47 1/4 x 23 5/8 x 11 3/4 in

    WENDEMITTEL II

    Redl's sculpture Stein 159-160 [Wendemittel II] also works with strong signs systems. The starting point for the form were the purposes of the ambon ("table of the word") and the rahle (derived from the Arabic word for "saddle"). In both cases, in the Christian and Muslim world, it is about the reception and reproduction of the written word as a cen-tral event. On one side, the ancient Greek letters alpha and omega, representative of the Christian narrative of beginning and end, rise from a ground, carved with the finest iron, while on the other side the Arabic lettering for In sha'Al-lah rises. A statement that has become an idiom. An idiom in everyday life, used across denominational lines, by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. The starting point or end point of reflections on possible statements of the signs is not pre-drawn by the sculpture in favor of a single interpretation, but manifests in its materiality the simultaneity of antagonisms. Even more, it reflects the condition that confronts groups and individuals within a pluralistic society with the mammoth task of having to learn to live with diversity and contradictoriness.

  • RING ZYKLUS I

    Markus Redl
    Der Ring-Zyklus I, 2020
    ink, charcoal, ink on paper, museum glass 
    174 x 124 cm
    68 1/2 x 48 7/8 in
  • Installation View, Markus Redl, Flussmitte, 2021
  • UNTERLAND ZYKLUS II

  • ABOUT THE ARTIST

     Markus Redl, Brecht-Zyklus II, 

    3 sheets of paper board (2.2 x 6.6 m),

    ink on paper, glued to wooden slats

    ABOUT THE ARTIST

    Markus Redl (b.1977 in Klosterneuburg, Austria) lives and works in Vienna. Before studying at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna in Erwin Wurm's class, Markus Redl studied psychology with a focus on criminology at the Juridicum in Vienna.

  • Markus Redl, Stein 156–157 [Wendemittel] , 2021, Bianco Carrara Marmor, Nero Belgio, Rosa Portogallo, 145 x 50 x 40 cm 57, 1/8 x 19 3/4 x 15 3/4 in
  • SELECTED EXHIBITIONS OF THE ARTIST

     

    Recent solo exhibitions include 'Mudras', Galerie Kandlhofer, 2017; ‘Betrachtungen – Arbeiten aus 10 Jahren', Galerie Chobot, 2015 and 'Markus Redl. Vogelfrei', Galerie Kandlhofer, 2015. Group exhibitions include: Würth Sculpture Garden, Schloss Arenberg, Salzburg, AT 2021; 'Ich bin alles zugleich' Lan-desgalerie Niederösterreich, Krems, AT 2019; 'Menagerie‘, Forum Würth, Rorschack, 2017; 'A.E.I.O.U.', Art Forum Würth, Capena, 2017; 'Endurance', Galerie Kandlhofer, 2016; 'Der Erzherzogshut / 400 Jahre Krone für Österreich', Stiftsmuseum Klosterneuburg, AT 2016; 'Skulpturen im Park' Schloss Halbturn, Burgenland, AT 2015; 'Von Hockney bis Holbein Die Sammlung Würth in Berlin', Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2015; 'Menagerie / Tierschau aus der Sammlung Würth', Kunsthalle Würth, Schwäbisch Hall, DE 2013; ‚Wo die Kunst sich sammelt’, Museum Anger-lehner, AT 2013.