Josef Dabernig
River Plate
13/8 – 18/9, 2016
Lulu is proud to
present the exhibition River Plate by the Austrian, Vienna-based artist Josef
Dabernig.
Known for his
exploration of social systems, post-wall Eastern European, brutalist
architecture, conceptual austerity, and dry humor, Josef Dabernig's practice
comprises film, photography, texts, objects and space-related concepts. At Lulu
he will be presenting the film River Plate (2013) as well as a selection of
black-and-white photographs of location shots taken for the film. Shot in
black-and-white Super-16, blown up to 35mm and transferred onto HD video, the
short, sixteen minute work depicts a group of seemingly unrelated people
gathering and sun bathing in a river which bears the damaged traces of
industrial construction under an underpass in a seemingly alpine, undisclosed
European location. According to the artist: “River Plate displays a micro society in a fragmented body-narration.
Knees, shoulders, feet and bellies are signifiers of articulated human
presence, revealing nothing else against a claustrophobic background of cement,
stone and water.” At once wry, troubling, and utterly strange, River Plate nevertheless
wields an understated lyrical quality which has less do with any kind
expressiveness than with a compositional rigor and beauty that strictly governs
each shot.
Josef Dabernig
(b. 1956, Kรถtschach-Mauthen, Austria) lives and
works in Vienna. A selection of recent solo exhibitions includes: Wilfried
Lentz, Rotterdam (2015); Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2014); and the
extensive survey, Rock the Void, Mumok - museum moderner kunst, stiftung ludwig
wien, Vienna (2014). His work has been featured in Manifesta biennial (St
Petersburg, 2014, and Ljubljana, 2000), the Gwangju Biennale (2012), and the
Venice biennale (2003 and 2001). His films have also been screened in numerous
film festivals including the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen,
International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Venice Film Festival. He is
currently preparing solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Winterthur, Winterthur,
Switzerland (2016) and Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany (2017).