Pierre Bismuth @Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier

Pierre Bismuth

Der Kurator, der Anwalt und der Psychoanalytiker (The Curator, the Lawyer and the Psychoanalyst)

4/2 – 22/3 2015  @Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier 

 

Curator: Luca Lo Pinto

 

Press conference: Tuesday, February 3, 2015, 10 am

Opening: Tuesday, February 3, 2015, 7 pm

 

"I just don’t like art that tries to take you somewhere else. I have a problem with art

that aims at providing entertainment and dreams. People don’t need art to dream.

Everyone is dreaming already. Everyone is already creative. The artist doesn’t have

the exclusivity of being creative in society."  Pierre Bismuth

 

 Pierre Bismuth, Following the Right Hand of Sigmund Freud, 2009, 

Courtesy: Christine König Galerie, Wien, Jan Mot, Brussels/Mexiko City and the artist

 

Der Kurator, der Anwalt und der Psychoanalytiker is an extensive solo exhibition by the French, Brussels based artist Pierre Bismuth. It aims to present the artist’s complex oeuvre, which spans all media and which approaches conceptual techniques in a way both experimental and humorous. The exhibition will present about 35 works created between 1988 and 2014 alongside a new piece produced by Kunsthalle Wien for the show. Turning the act of selecting into a conceptual gesture, the works of art in the exhibition will not be chosen by the artist himself, but by three people with a different background each: a curator (Luca Lo Pinto), a psychoanalyst (Angel Enciso), and a lawyer (Laurent Caretto). Bismuth asked each of them to select a number of works and to write a short text explaining their choice. These texts will function as captions for the works on display. With this revised process, the artist aims to question the role of the artist and the curator as well as the framework provided by the exhibition and thus the common curatorial scenario as such. Pierre Bismuth considers his artistic practice a tool for examining our way of looking at reality. Most of his works aim, both in a serious and playful way, at questioning   pre-established rules of  perception and make the viewer aware of hidden or unnoticed elements of reality. Bismuth is interested in altering regulating sign systems and inserting uncertainty in situations that seem defined. As he once said: “I’m not interested in the meaning of life but in how life creates meaning.” In this sense, his work reacts to impulses from daily routine and creates ideas out of boredom. Many of Bismuth’s works take images, objects or artefacts from popular culture as their point of departure, alter their data and present them in a way that does not allow for easy reading as their original information is corrupted. Hence, they look familiar and at the same time distinct from the already known; accessible, yet complex in their meaning. Bismuth’s exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien takes a

similar approach.

 Pierre Bismuth, Most Wanted Men – Dan Flavin, 2006,

 Courtesy the artist and Jan Mot, Brussels/Mexico City, MARY BOONE GALLERY, NEW YORK

Using the whole exhibition as a medium, Pierre Bismuth will extend his conceptual gesture also to other elements related to the exhibition, including publicity and publications. Adopting the poster campaign for the exhibition, for example, he will display three new pieces from his ongoing text-based Performances series, which describe scenarios hard to distinguish from ordinary activities of passers-by, at various public spaces of Vienna.

The catalogue will work as another extension of the exhibition. Loosely inspired by the idea of a catalogue raisonné, it contains images of every single work produced by Bismuth in his career so far. A booklet featuring a conversation between Luca Lo Pinto and the artist, an essay by Dessislava Dimova and the texts by the curator, the lawyer and the psychoanalyst, accompanies it.

 

 

 Pierre Bismuth, Where is Rocky II – Trailer, 2013, 

Courtesy the artist and Jan Mot, Brussels / Mexico City

 

Pierre Bismuth (*1963) lives and works in Brussels. His work has been shown

extensively in galleries (Jan Mot, Brussels; Christine König, Vienna; Lisson Gallery,

London; Team Gallery, New York; Mary Boone, New York; Yvon Lambert, Paris) and

public institutions (Centre Pompidou, Paris; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; New Museum,

New York; Castello di Rivoli; Casino Luxemburg; Villa Arson, Nice; ICA London;

Kunsthalle Basel; Witte de With, Rotterdam and many others). In 2004 Bismuth won

the Academy Award for best screenplay for Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. He is currently working on his first feature film called Where is Rocky II?

 

practical info:

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