Søren Grammel Knihy

The expression “Der symbolische Auftraggeber/The Symbolic Commissioner” refers to the utopia of the New Man, which various avant-gardes from art, dance, and architecture proclaimed both the client and the aim of their artistic production at the beginning of the 20th century. This client is a symbolic one, because his actual identity remains ambivalent. Houses and carpets, wallpapers and suits, new cities and chairs were designed for him. Yet the figure has remained a utopian one, flaring-up only for brief moments and as a fragmentary manifestation from the productions of the artists. A thematic book including a.o. numerous color views of the exhibitions “Idealismusstudio” and “Die Blaue Blume” (the latter counted among the “Best themed Shows 2007” in frieze magazine, 2008). Both projects took place at the Grazer Kunstverein. Co-published with Grazer Kunstverein Contributors Anni Albers, Vojin Bakić, Martin Beck, Christoph Bruckner, Saim Demircan, Luca Frei, Lasse Schmidt Hansen, Heidrun Holzfeind, Marine Hugonnier, David Jourdan, Jacob Dahl Jürgensen, Paul Klee, Katarzyna Kobro, Hilary Lloyd, Marika Lõoke & Jüri Okas, Camilla Løw, Kenneth Martin, Ulrike Meinhof, George Nelson, Silke Otto-Knapp, Vaclav Pozarek, Florian Roithmayr, Giles Round, Nora Schultz, Sean Snyder, Juliane Solmsdorf, Pernille Kapper Williams.

Von Bildern presents art based on the appropriation of existing pictures and genres. Such processes often entail transfers from one medium into another: a photograph is filmed, a painting is photographed. Appropriation adds a new perspective on the content of the material being appropriated and calls its authenticity and authorship in question. It may articulate a critical study of visual models and blueprints from mass and entertainment media and the templates of identity they transmit. Or it may point up the forever fluid borders and commerce between the visual arts and the culture industry. It can tell stories of the media trajectories along which patterns and forms migrate between the genres and apparatuses of distribution. Or it scrutinizes practices that evolve in the interplay between the publicity generated by institutions and private marketing. The exhibition considers strategies of appropriation as a form of discourse in and about pictures. It widens the scope of reflection beyond the formal qualities of pictures to examine the various institutional and social settings and channels in which they originate and circulate.