installation view 1st floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
© HEIMO ZOBERNIG/Kunsthaus Bregenz/Bildrecht, Wien, 2015
photo: MARKUS TRETTER

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installation view 1st floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
© HEIMO ZOBERNIG/Kunsthaus Bregenz/Bildrecht, Wien, 2015
photo: MARKUS TRETTER

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installation view 1st floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
© HEIMO ZOBERNIG/Kunsthaus Bregenz/Bildrecht, Wien, 2015
photo: MARKUS TRETTER

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installation view 1st floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
© HEIMO ZOBERNIG/Kunsthaus Bregenz/Bildrecht, Wien, 2015
photo: MARKUS TRETTER

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untitled, 2015
laminated particle board, steel frame on casters, 292 x 202 x 80 cm
© HEIMO ZOBERNIG/Kunsthaus Bregenz/Bildrecht, Wien, 2015
photo: MARKUS TRETTER

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installation view 2nd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
© HEIMO ZOBERNIG/Kunsthaus Bregenz/Bildrecht, Wien, 2015
photo: MARKUS TRETTER

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installation view 1st floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
© HEIMO ZOBERNIG/Kunsthaus Bregenz/Bildrecht, Wien, 2015
photo: MARKUS TRETTER

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installation view 3rd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
© HEIMO ZOBERNIG/Kunsthaus Bregenz/Bildrecht, Wien, 2015
photo: MARKUS TRETTER

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installation view 3rd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
© HEIMO ZOBERNIG/Kunsthaus Bregenz/Bildrecht, Wien, 2015
photo: MARKUS TRETTER

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installation view 3rd floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz
© HEIMO ZOBERNIG/Kunsthaus Bregenz/Bildrecht, Wien, 2015
photo: MARKUS TRETTER

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To be truly honest, up until his solo exhibition at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, I had never really had any particular interest in HEIMO ZOBERNIG‘s work. Of course I knew who he is, I scrolled his endless list of exhibitions on his website (an online moment quite related to a performance) and I have encountered a few works (mainly paintings) before. But let’s say I was ZOBERNIG free.

The exhibition in Bregenz is not described as a retrospective nor a survey, although the Austrian Institution gathers together key works made over a twenty-year span, taking up the three floors of the museum in a chronological order. Actually order seems to be an important ingredient for the Austrian artist, which is mostly perceptible in the first floor of the Kunsthaus, where an armada of structures, looking like empty bookshelves, is standing . These elements, all designated as ‘untitled’, are displayed in precise parallel rows, and seem to follow an invisible grid.  The light is intense and blueish thanks to the ceiling made of aligned frosted glass panels. This lighting as well as the polished concrete of the floor and the walls render the surfaces of ZOBERNIG‘s works in a raw and cheap materiality. A rather honest posture since the materials include MDF, cardboard and mirrored plexiglas that is reinforced by the DIY finitions of these objects. Eventually the whole compositional pattern of geometrical forms engages a frontal dialog with the rigorous design of the museum, inducing an ambivalent environment at once familiar and abstract.

The second floor features a single monumental installation made of black curtains and aluminium structures. To enter the new space generated by the piece, you can choose to bypass the whole installation or to go through the fabric. A white bench has been placed on the left end of the installation allowing the visitor to watch the people peering behind the curtains. By staying a while into this ‘stage’ and observing the reaction of the other visitors, you have the uncanny feeling of being watched while watching and inversely. Finally, on the third floor, a part of the ceiling’s glass panels has been removed revealing the structural architecture of the ceiling in order to integrate instead a large black form made of cardboard. The spectacular sculpture recalls an utopian futuristic architecture that is reinforced by the presence of a raw cast of a human figure assembled from various modified mannequins.

Finally HEIMO ZOBERNIG’s solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Bregenz, is concentrated on the sculptural aspect of his practice since none of his paintings are shown. This absence not only emphasizes the strata of minimal forms and reduced gestures across the different installations, but also – and in a more consequent way – stresses the repetitive, rigorous and hermetic design of the museum.

HEIMO ZOBERNIG at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria is on view until January 10, 2016.

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