About the exhibition

so
tell me

Gerwald Rockenschaub is a well-known figure on the international art scene. His diverse body of work is a frequently addressed subject in theoretical discourse. And yet real-life encounters with his works have an intense immediacy; their sensual quality speaks directly to the viewer without any need for definitive explanation or instruction.

Rockenschaub’s geometric oil paintings of the early 1980s placed him within the neo-geo movement. In 1987, however, Rockenschau abandoned brush and canvas for industrial products like acrylic glass, synthetic panels, and plastic film. His plastic-film pictures, objects, digital animations, and bold space-specific installations reference both modernist concepts and everyday cultural phenomena. In an act of radical reduction and concentration, these are boiled down to their central elements to create clear structures that are ambiguously placed between abstraction and subtle irony.

Since his earliest exhibitions, Rockenschaub has assigned a key role to the surrounding interior architecture, developing space-specific concepts that consider the parameters of the space and explore it as a picture medium in itself. With colourful shapes and planes, the walls and entire exhibition space are charged with a dramatical rhythm like a musical composition, so that the pictorial element absorbs the architectural dimensions. Rockenschaub’s visual work has always been decisively influenced by his involvement in the music and sound scene. He has been active in music since the early 1980s and still gives concerts to this day.

In 1993, Rockenschaub exhibited works in the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale; in 2007 he was present at documenta 12 in Kassel. Both times he presented monumental room installations – sculptural, choreographed interventions that shifted conventional hierarchical structures of architecture, artwork and beholder, tangibly unsettling the viewer only to then soothe the discomfort with cool, subtle humour.

Since the early 1990s, Rockenschaub has developed his works, and entire exhibitions, using only a computer. The reductive hipness of new wave and techno, the technique of sampling make their presence felt in Rockenschaub’s mechanised production and his conception and composition of images, installations and exhibitions. The computer is his studio.

Rockenschaub’s exhibitions are always surprising – even for those who follow his work closely. Accustomed perspectives are undermined, lending the exhibition space an atmosphere that positively vibrates in an invocation of a soundscape. Visitors to the current exhibition at Galerie Krobath are by no means intended to feel safe and comfortable. Rather, the title alone “so… tell me” is an explicit challenge to the viewer to take a stance on the work.

In this exhibition, Rockenschaub juxtaposes older objects from the early 1980s with his latest works: sculptural wall objects and in particular numerous pictures composed on aluminium honeycomb panels of various sizes whose cut edges reveal the raw inner workings. The coloured film is applied to the surface in clearly defined blocks with finely calibrated hues. Sometimes the individual pieces of film are layered, generating a special haptic that emphasises the sculptural quality of the picture. Rockenschaub plays with the texture and structure of his materials and the creative possibilities they offer. He venerates the subtlest variations in colour shading, utilises tiny differences in layer thickness, and revels in the subtle distinctions between the glossy or silky surfaces of the film and the underlying matt base. In so doing, he calls forth sensual, pictorial qualities that manifest an aloof sleekness, an elegant minimalism that nonetheless possesses a flashy, funky quality.  

Reduced and fragmented forms encroach on the picture surfaces in precise configurations. The individual compositions lend a sensual interpretation to a subtly provocative, nebulous view – only to decisively negate that view as it dissolves into the abstract. Thus, the works insinuate a spatial complexity and motion whose origins are sought in vain. Only the smallest of the new pieces, proclaiming “no” in red letters on a white background, posits a concrete subject matter within the otherwise playful vagueness of the remaining pieces. The recalcitrant “no” packs an abrupt punch, contradictory in its existence and unequivocal in its ambivalence.

With the careful positioning of the individual pieces, Rockenschaub has given each item a specific function within the context of the exhibition, creating a stimulating dynamic in the constellation. He is playing an ambiguous game within the larger overarching concept, giving it a specific rhythm and dramatic twist, highlighting familiar principles only to cheerfully undermine them, apparently blithely but with a darker undertone of irony. This multi-layered art presentation does not offer answers – instead it circles back to the imperative title of the exhibition, at once deviously dazzling yet teasingly challenging: “so… tell me”.

– Margareta Sandhofer
– Translated by Heather Kimber