"under construction" exhibition : ernst koslitsch

ERNST KOSLITSCH „UNDER CONSTRUCTION"

Galerie RAUM MIT LICHT Kaiserstrasse 32, A-1070 Wien

Der junge Photograph Ernst Koslitsch hegt prinzipielle Zweifel am photographischen Bild, an der Möglichkeit Wirklichkeit einzufangen. Deshalb konstruiert er zuerst, was er photographiert. Er baut Modelle von Häusern, entwirft architektonische Szenarien und Bühnenbilder, in denen Leben stattfinden könnte.

"Wir hausen in solchen Sachen, sind von ihnen behaust, werden von ihnen mit einer Ordnung bedacht", schreibt Gerhard Strohmeier in seinem Text zur Ausstellung und meint mit Karl Marx, dass die Menschen die Dinge machen, aber "sie machen sie nicht aus freien Stücken". Standart-Häuser formen Standart-Leben, wir gleichen den Bildern, die man von uns macht. "Ich lebe in einer Wohnung voller Häuser", sagt der Künstler. Im Verweis auf das Atelier wird mit subversiver Ironie deutlich, wie die Simulation von Wirklichkeit in der Kunst diesen Zirkelschluss aufbrechen kann.

Einige Arbeiten der aktuellen Ausstellung zeigen "re-konstruierte" Eindrücke von Häusern. Der dokumentarische Charakter der s/w Aufnahmen wird unterlaufen von der Auswechselbarkeit der hier dargestellten, besonderen, Architektur. Die konstruierte Welt-Wirklichkeit formt Wahrnehmung und Denken, in derselben Bewegung ist Erinnerung, diese sehr persönliche Genauigkeit, zusammengesetzt aus den allgemeinsten Bildern. Die Modelle und Häuser verschränken sich mit der Ebene des photographischen Abbildens zu einer komplexen Poetik, die mediale Vielschichtigkeit stellt die Grenzen von Modell und Abbild in Frage, lässt Konstruktion, Bild und Wirklichkeit in einander übergehen : zuerst und zuletzt ist Leben immer "under constrution".

Text: Daniela Hölzl

Imagined Spaces
Gerhard Strohmeier

Ernst Koslitsch’s models invite a look into to secret worlds, into intimate spaces. The models instigate a reflection on perception and form associations on several levels, on plateaus corresponding to the multi-layeredness of the perception of space. Firstly, the poetics of the models, in the housing, furniture, apartments, and in the public surroundings of dwelling places are brought to light. A second poetic level is that of the photographic image, which is more than a representation of the model yielding its own reality of a modeled and an imagined space.

The models of the living quarters show conditio humana: things that account for the human condition. Not only the objects of dwelling, of living and of play, but also the house and the apartment itself are things. We dwell in such things, we are inhabited by these things, our order is determined by them. People make their own history, “but they do not make it as they please” (Karl Marx). And the models of things point out that things form our lives, to put it more bluntly, things make us humans. The form and function of apartments and houses dictate the context in which we move and operate, in which we live and deal with each other. We function according to the function of these things. The exterior and the interior, the floor plan of the bedroom, living room, kitchen organize our lives into different worlds, into public, partially public and intimate, private spaces. Even in the private and intimate worlds, we appear to lead a standardized life, a life according to a model. The models allow a look from the outside into the interior space through a hole where a wall is missing, through an oversized window. They take the privacy of dwelling and fulfill what Vilém Flusser announced with his ideas about the nomadic human of postmodernism: “The perfect house with a roof, walls, windows, and doors exists only in fairy tales.”1 Or, elsewhere and with greater clarity, Koslitsch illustrates the already completed demolition of domestic privacy, the rear wall of the house is missing: “The perfect house has become a ruin through whose cracks gust the winds of communication.”2

The interiors of dwellings are turned inside out. Not only is the architectonic bearer of form, the outer wall, public and thereby political, even the interior wall becomes visible and allows access to the curious eye of media. The model simultaneously reveals and alienates: It takes what is foreign from the interior spaces and turns it into a projection space of fantasies and perversions.
The invasion of media communication becomes evident in the photographed model: “The home has become drafty, as gales of media sweep through from all directions […]”.3 The model is a poetic space, closely connected to the television. Ernst Koslitsch explores this phenomenon of television infiltrating private life, of soap operas and telenovelas generating their own realities and providing templates for our lives in houses and apartments.

Koslitsch guides our view into the models, into the private life that we both assume and imagine...

more at www.raum-mit-licht.at

RAUM MIT LICHT Galerie

Kaiserstraße 32
1070 Wien

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