venice art biennale
56th Venice Art Biennale 2015
WOLFGANG PAVLIK I 56th VENICE ART BIENNALE I PERSONAL STRUCTURES - Crossing Borders / Palazzo Mora
The EUROPEAN CULTURAL CENTRE exhibition "Personal Structures - Crossing Borders" shows the commonness and differences between Europeans, this in Dialogue with works of Non-Europeans. In addition the exhibition stimulates a more conscious relationship from the spectator towards his daily surrounding aiming to increase the awareness of their own personal Existence as human beings influenced by a specific Culture within Space and Time.
For the exhibition of the 56th Venice Biennale, Wolfgang Pavlik created a work in monumental scale, an assembly of individual back of heads, entitled: You don’t know me. Its wide ranged presentation shows a focus on the process of the European integration with a critical eye on the political dichotomy and cultural split of a continent between North and South, East and West. Pavlik is showcasing at the Venice Biennale in artistic dialogue with: Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Guenther Uecker, Francois Morellet, Herman Nitsch, Richard Long, Yoko Ono, Lawrence Weiner, among others.
you don't know me (Palazzo Mora 2015)
In the overwhelming process of market expansion and political unification we universally face the exploitable attributes of all-embracing social collaboration and utilization while the unusable human residuum gets increasingly faceless. What remains to the intractable individual in contrast is a restricted view, a selection of pre-existing inner images and their layout.
"The face is politics" (Deleuze/Guattari), it is subject of attribution and deduction/reckoning. Wearing a face also means risking to loose it. The individual is given a face only by surrendering to the rules of society. The portrait highly depends on the portrayed person's importance, i.e. on the role the persons plays in society. Only the socially acclaimed face is worth to be portrayed - a fact that is proven whenever talking of the faceless crush.
Taken from anonymous sources and cut from its initial denotation the portrait becomes a free flowing icon. Thus it suspends the faces´ codes of social credit and identity. Pavlik's pictures of heads and occiputs show individual characteristics without referring to a specific individual. They are portraits without subjects, untitled presentations of individuality.
We look at a wall of 14 occiputs of different ages, sexes and colours. We may consider this concourse of back of heads as a marker of resistance oder non-co-operation against the actual run of political life and economical crisis. But also, we could imagine ourselves as members of the crowd, looking forward and straightened to a common but still unknown collective future.
While we contemplate Pavlik´s painting, the human dimension subtly resurges and becomes visible again through the absence of distinctive faces and their rampant abuse. We begin to reflect about the stories these heads might tell us, but as the future of our common life the traces of our individuality at once awaken our interest but will keep its secrets.
Alexander Schadt, a.o.,Vienna 2015
wolfgang pavlik
you don´t know me
PERSONAL STRUCTURES - Crossing Borders
Palazzo Mora Venice, May 9 - Nov 22 2015
