Aglaia Konrad, Carrara Cut, 2013
Pigment digital print on fibaprint mate 280 gr and aluminium, 200 x 100 cm. Collection FRAC Grand Large – Hauts-de-France, Dunkerque.

Le communiqué de presse :

L’exposition « Permanent Déplacement » met en lumière le travail artistique de Sarah Feuillas, réalisé depuis sa sortie des Beaux-arts en 2011, en lien avec une œuvre de l’artiste autrichienne Aglaia Konrad, récemment acquise par le Frac. Toutes deux s’intéressent à l’architecture et aux paysages transformés par les hommes. La photographie tient une place importante dans leurs démarches. Elle permet de faire des repérages de sites, de prélever des détails, d’isoler des formes et d’accentuer des points de vue. Ces images, soigneusement cadrées, associées ou retravaillées, donnent lieu à de véritables lectures sociales, historiques, économiques et politiques du paysage.

Aglaia Konrad choisit de « monter » ses photographies dans des suites linéaires discontinues. Après avoir filmé des maisons modernistes aux allures sculpturales, en prêtant une attention particulière aux matières et aux surfaces, elle est remontée jusqu’aux carrières de marbre de Carrare en Italie pour scruter la transformation des falaises.
Le triptyque Carrara Cut associe des images coupées – comme sont découpés les blocs de marbre – et marouflées sur la surface miroitante de plaques d’aluminium. Le choix du noir et blanc fait ressortir les surfaces accidentées des falaises et leurs lignes géométriques. Parce que de nombreux chefs-d’œuvre de la sculpture et de l’architecture occidentales commencent avec l’extraction de la pierre, son exploitation n’a cessé depuis l’Antiquité et continue d’alimenter le commerce mondial. La transformation du paysage est comprise ici comme un acte culturel que l’artiste archive à un moment donné. L’œuvre fait penser au déroulé d’un film dont l’acteur principal aurait été effacé. Loin d’une vision nostalgique ou romantique du paysage en ruine, Aglaia Konrad agit pour lui donner une nouvelle forme. On peut ici penser aux interventions de Robert Smithson (1938-1973) dans le désert américain, comme sa célèbre Spiral Jetty à Salt Lake City. Avec cette construction minérale éphémère, il revendiquait l’acte artistique comme un principe d’interruption poétique dans le processus global de dégradation du paysage.

Le titre de l’exposition « Permanent Déplacement » peut évoquer cette confrontation au phénomène entropique, qui est inéluctable dispersion de la matière, principe physique d’instabilité et d’usure permanente. Comme Aglaia Konrad, Sarah Feuillas s’intéresse à la géologie des sites, leurs échos formels et leurs rythmes. Toutes deux s’attachent à reformuler les paysages et à révéler leur dimension narrative.

23.09.17 – 31.12.17
Vernissage le samedi 23 septembre à 17h

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Aglaia Konrad participe à l’exposition Asymmetric Architectures. Readings in the Postwar History of the Kunstverein au Kunsteverein Düsseldorf.
Jusqu’au 8 octobre 2017

Aglaia Konrad
Iconocopycity 2011
Inkjet NB Photocopies mounted on the wall, variable dimensions. Edition 3/3

Asymmetric Architextures
Readings in the Postwar History of the Kunstverein

Roy Arden, Ilka Becker, Peter Brüning, Robert Burghardt, Natalie Czech, Henning Fehr & Philipp Rühr, Gesa Hüwe / Inga Thiele, Christina Irrgang, hobbypopMUSEUM, Aglaia Konrad, Sarah Kürten, David Lamelas, Katrin Mayer, Rita McBride / Christoph Westermeier, Vanessa Joan Müller, Marie-Luise Otten, Hedda Schattanik / Roman Szczesny, Mark von Schlegell, Arne Schmitt, Studio For Propositional Cinema, Sarah Szczesny, Alexander Jasch / Rita Kersting / Anette Freudenberger / Jens Ullrich, Jan Wagner, Alex Wissel

This year, the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen together with the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the architectural complex on the Grabbeplatz (completed in 1967), and hence 50 years that both institutions have existed under the same roof. On this occasion, the Kunstverein presents the exhibition, archival project, and event series Asymmetric Architextures – Readings in the Postwar History of the Kunstverein. At the center of the group exhibition is an investigation of the artistic and cultural-political activities and negotiations of the Kunstverein in connection with the institution’s architecture, designed by Konrad Beckmann and Christoph Brockes.
The thematic and temporal framework is derived from the building itself, and also from the cultural-political conflicts, discussions, and events linked to its origin: the siting of the postwar Kunstverein in the ruins of the old Kunsthalle; the call for proposals and the competition for a new building; the discussions around the former director of city planning, Friedrich Tamms, who had previously been active as an architect in Albert Speer’s closest circle, and the dispute over architecture in Düsseldorf that he and his allies provoked; the role of the Kunstverein under the direction of Hildebrandt Gurlitt – and subsequently under Karl-Heinz Hering – and thus of an era in which the Kunstverein’s gave an important impetus towards a reconstruction of the Kunsthalle; and finally the protests that met the opening of the building, as well as those over its preservation in the 1990s. In short, the point of departure is a period that was characterized by protests against an inadequate process of coming to terms with the National Socialist past, as well as by the reconstruction of the postwar years, and which even today remains crucial for understanding the current institutional landscape in Düsseldorf and the intertwining of the Kunstverein and Kunsthalle.
In connection with a wide-ranging research project and an examination of the numerous records of the Kunstverein in the Düsseldorf Municipal Archive, artists and art historians were invited to connect aspects of these historical discussions to their own work, and/or to expand on these discussions through readings of selected moments in the institution’s later exhibition history. The artist Katrin Mayer in turn developed a display made of assembled vertical and horizontal surfaces which are overwritten with archival materials, artworks, artifacts, and texts, as well as art historical analyses and new artistic productions. In this interplay between individual spatialized clusters of material, the history of the building – and thus also that of the Kunstverein – is activated as a continuously shifting provisional framework for various interrelated temporalities and architextures.
The project is accompanied by a program of events as well as a film series at the Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf. The precise schedule will be made available shortly.
The exhibition was curated by Eva Birkenstock and conceived in dialog with Katrin Mayer with the assistance of Lidiya Anastasova, Gesa Hüwe, and Inga Thiele, as well as the participants in the accompanying seminar Living Archives. Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen 1947-67 at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf.

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Aglaia Konrad participe à l’exposition « Le Ciel devant soi, photographie et architecture religieuse » au Couvent des Jacobins à Toulouse, dans le cadre du festival « Printemps de Septembre ».

Le Ciel devant soi rassemble le travail de huit artistes européens, qui tous photographient des églises. Autour de ce sujet, s’ouvre un véritable panorama des pratiques contemporaines de la photographie. Témoignant tour à tour des plus ambitieux accomplissements de l’architecture, du rapport irrésolu à la transcendance ou des cahots de l’Histoire, les bâtiments religieux permettent les observations les plus variées. Les artistes se sont donc emparés de ce sujet, l’un pour exalter l’esthétique de ces monuments, l’autre pour raconter des transformations urbaines et sociales, pour questionner le fonctionnement de ces machines à faire croire, pour montrer l’irruption formelle de la modernité, pour chercher la trace d’une idée dans le béton, ou encore évoquer les souvenirs d’un front de guerre. Bref, si les théologiens décrivent l’architecture sacrée comme « un morceau d’espace fini qui nous protège de l’infini », pour les photographes du Ciel devant soi, c’est avant tout « une vraie source de vie quotidienne ». Avec : Eric Tabucchi, Fabrice Fouillet, Angèle Laissue, Cyril Porchet, David Spero, Christof Klute, Markus Brunetti, Aglaia Konrad

Du 2 juin au 17 septembre 2017

Aglaia Konrad, Concrete & Samples I Wotruba Wien, 16mm transferred to video, color, 4:3, no sound, BE, 2009, 13’37 »

Aglaia Konrad, Concrete & Samples II Blockhaus, 16mm transferred to video, color, 4:3, no sound, BE, 2009, 9’50 »

Concrete & Samples I, II, III is a series of 16mm films on sculptural architecture. What the buildings and site in all films have in common is the idea of ‘architecture as sculpture’ and a very distinct use of concrete that seem to depart from the free form of the whole in a sculptural manner. In the absence of a traditional narrative, it is the space itself, that takes the role of the protagonist, while the camera proposes a narration through its travel and observation.
Blockhaus, the Eglise St.Bernadette-du-Banlay designed by Claude Parent and Paul Virilio in Nevers, France, has a compact form: monolithic, a cryptic building, a raw concrete bunker. Built upon a utopian idea, the inside with its ‘sureface oblique’ (two oblique ramps) creates a spatial dynamic in the matrix of time.
The church of Fritz Wotruba, in Vienna looks like an enlarged piece of abstract sculpture, a kind of three-dimensional synthetic cubist arrangement of 152 concrete blocks arranged vertically and horizontally, but asymmetrically, in which the narrow spaces produced in-between are made use of as windows and doors.

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In the mid-1950s, the architectural style known as Brutalism emerged in the United Kingdom. It is characterized by exposed concrete walls and building materials such as metal and bricks. Today it is increasingly vanishing from the urban landscape, since these buildings, most of which are not protected as historical landmarks, are gradually being demolished.

At the same time, fan groups are forming, also in the Internet. They include, for example, the Facebook group The Brutalism Appreciation Society, whose 50,000+ members work to preserve the remains of urban architecture of the 1950s and 1960s. Inspired by the activities of this group, the exhibition The Brutalism Appreciation Society is showing 21 international artists who are engaging with the Brutalist architectural style of postwar modernism as well as a selection of contributions from the eponymous Facebook group.

Concrete & Samples II Blockhaus
16 mm transferred to video, color, 4:3, no sound, BE, 2009,
9’50 » Image Sébastien Koeppel. Editing Aglaia Konrad, Fairuz. Colorgrading Sébastien Koeppel. Produced by Auguste Orts

Concrete & Samples I Wotruba Wien
16 mm transferred to video, color, 4:3, no sound, BE, 2009, 13’37. Image Vincent Pinckaers . Editing Aglaia Konrad & Fairuz. Colorgrading Sébastien Koeppel.
Produced by Auguste Orts

Poursuivant son exploration des formes sculpturales de l’architecture, Aglaia Konrad parvient dans ce film à saisir toute la puissance brutaliste de l’Eglise de la Sainte Trinité (1976), chef-d’œuvre expressionniste de l’artiste autrichien Fritz Wotruba (1907-1975). Guidé par son approche tectonique de la sculpture de pierre, Wotruba réalise à Vienne une construction monumentale en misant sur l’empilement et l’enchevêtrement de gigantesques blocs de béton. La caméra d’Aglaia Konrad devient le meilleur témoin d’une architecture spirituelle unifiée dans le chaos, dont l’image primitive et atemporelle renvoie aux mégalithes sacrés de Stonehenge. Concrete & Samples II Blockhaus présente l’Église Sainte-Bernadette du Banlay de Nevers, conçue par Claude Parent et Paul Virilio. Monolithique, énigmatique, elle apparaît comme un bunker en béton brut. Construite selon une idée utopique, l’espace intérieur présente deux rampes obliques qui créent une dynamique spatiale. Dernier film de la trilogie, Concrete & Samples III Carrara montre la célèbre carrière de marbre du même nom. Ce paysage toujours en évolution paraît avoir été sculpté, semble comporter des architectures temporaires et fait de nombreuses références à l’histoire de l’art.

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Aglaia Konrad
Shaping Stones, 2016
Installation au Musée M, Leuven

Aglaia Konrad participe à l’exposition :

The Brutalism Appreciation Society
HMKV Dortmund
8.04.2017 > 24.09.2017
Opening on Friday, 7 April 2017, at 7 pm at the HMKV at the Dortmunder U, Level 3
Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse, 44137 Dortmund, Germany

In the mid-1950s, the architectural style known as Brutalism emerged in the United Kingdom. It is characterized by exposed concrete walls and building materials such as metal and bricks. Today it is increasingly vanishing from the urban landscape, since these buildings, most of which are not protected as historical landmarks, are gradually being demolished.

At the same time, fan groups are forming, also in the Internet. They include, for example, the Facebook group The Brutalism Appreciation Society, whose 50,000+ members work to preserve the remains of urban architecture of the 1950s and 1960s. Inspired by the activities of this group, the exhibition The Brutalism Appreciation Society is showing 21 international artists who are engaging with the Brutalist architectural style of postwar modernism as well as a selection of contributions from the eponymous Facebook group.

The HMKV exhibition is being presented in parallel to Documenta in Kassel and Skulptur Projekte in Münster.

An exhibition with contributions by Bettina Allamoda (DE), Jordi Colomer (ES), Darco FBI (DE/FR), EVOL (DE), Darko Fritz (HR), Anne-Valérie Gasc (FR), Niklas Goldbach (DE), Freya Hattenberger & Peter Simon (DE/PL), Alekos Hofstetter (DE), Martin Kohout (CZ), Aglaia Konrad (AT/BE), Nicolas Moulin (FR), Reto Müller (CH), Andrea Pichl (DE), Heidi Specker (DE), Philip Topolovac (DE), Kay Walkowiak (AT), Ruben Woodin Dechamps & Oscar Hudson (UK), Tobias Zielony (DE)

Curator : Dr. Inke Arns

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Aglaia Konrad participe à l’exposition « Copy Construct » (curated by Kasper Andreasen) au Centre Culturel de Mechelen (Malines).
25 mars > 4 juin. Vernissage ce 24 mars à 20h.

The exhibition Copy Construct departs from different artistic practices and speci c works by artists that are based on ‘reproduction’ or ‘copy’. The selected works are inherent to the production of printed matter or artist’s books. This implies that different artistic media such as painting, drawing, photography, video, sculpture, and graphic design can manifest themselves through graphical problematics and their meanings.
Alongside the 25 works of the artists, a little less than 300 books from the KASK collection (School of Arts, Ghent) and private collections from Belgium and England are displayed in the exhibition. The exhibition architecture is designed by Kris Kimpe and Koenrad Dedobbeleer and is accompanied by a publication, designed by Joris Dockx, which includes a bibliography of the exhibited books, different contributions by the artists, an interview with a book collector, etc.

Curated by Kasper Andreasen

With work by: Kasper Andreasen, Peter Downsbrough, Vincent Geyskens & Jan Op de Beeck, Henri Jacobs, Jan Kempenaers, Kris Kimpe & Koenraad Dedobbeleer Stephanie Kiwitt, Aglaia Konrad, Alon Levin, Sara MacKillop, Gregorio Magnani, Marc Nagtzaam, Willem Oorebeek, Frans Oosterhof, Ria Pacquée, Simon Popper, Guy Rombouts, Mitja Tušek, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (Club Moral) & the KASK Collection et al.

and publications by: Brumaria, Sébastien Conard, Arnaud Desjardins, De Enschedese School, Mekhitar Garabedian, Thomas Geiger (Mark Pezinger Verlag), Jef Geys, Groepsdruk (& others), Karl Holmqvist, Jochen Lempert, Louis Lüthi, Jurgen Maelfeyt, Mark Manders, Karel Martens, Tine Melzer, Dan Mitchell, Kristen Mueller, Olaf Nicolai, Sophie Nys, Quick Magazine, Kurt Ryslavy, Joachim Schmid, David Sherry, Erik Steinbrecher, Derek Sullivan, Elisabeth Tonnard, This Week, Erik van der Weijde, Maud Vande Veire, Gert Verhoeven, Leen Voet, Jan Voss, Fritz Welch

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