Ohne Titel
/3
- Untitled
- Ohne Titel
- 1989
- dispersion paint, press board
- 280 x 52 x 50 cm
Heimo Zobernig’s industrial standard format chipboard lying on the floor and his angle made of chipboard are examples of his critically attitude to the aesthetic phenomenology of the Minimal Art. Like the Minimalists, Zobernig works here with industrially manufactured materials; but as well as being less stable and durable—and thus less heroic or monumental—than the metals used by the Minimalists, his pieces of chipboard also bear associations with the construction of furniture and stage props. In addition, Zobernig makes an ironic break with the Minimalist’s strictly observed absence of traces of the artist’s hand, since his angle-shaped piece has a course coat of paint that is “incomplete” in places—although this is less an expression of artistic intention than the painterly gesture of painting and decorating, with which Zobernig raises the question of how to define the precise difference between the two. The problem of definition criteria in art is also addressed in his ambivalent play with the potential of these objects to be read as presentation aids or architectural elements: the board as the most elementary form of platform or podium is an aid that often supports the definition of an object as a work of art. The angle, which can be read as suggestion of a pillar, quotes an architectural element that also often plays a role in the world of shows, be it exhibitions or the theater. E.B.