BEAUTY & BODY
spring/summer 2010

View on beauty and body

The body and its beauty is a central theme in art - not only in portrayal arts. Since humans are materializing their wishes, hopes, fears, emotions in rituals or performances, paintings or sculptures, the art workers are mirroring preferably the creators themselves. 'Beauty' as a construction - a product of the interaction with others - or more abstract: the relational aspect of our live, is a signature theme in modern art.

Fashionoffice has searched through the material that was sent for editorial consideration and has picked three art events that provide a new perspective on today’s society, the individual - and nature.

Beauty and Death

The annual festival 'Steirischer Herbst' has invited the French director Gisèle Vienne to premiere with a German version of the theatre-performance 'This is how you will disappear' by approaching beauty from a Vanitas aspect - showing beauty between love and death, on 25 September 2010 in Graz. Gisèle Vienne creates even the scenography; she applies an environmental aspect to the performance about beauty: Vienne sets her three beautiful and edgy protagonists into an artificial nature, which becomes more and more an active protagonist on the stage, between the artists, floats into the auditorium, until it reaches the theatre guests... The performance will run from 25 to 27 September 2010 at the festival 'Steirischer Herbst' in Graz.

Fig. original: Gisèle Vienne 'This is how you will disappear'. Photo: (C) Sebastien Durand.
On the website of the festival 'Steirischer Herbst', statistical-a-like percentage data and keywords give for each event a short overview, such as for Vienne's performance: 33% of the performance is 'theatre', 33% of the content delivers 'beauty & horror', and 33% of the scenery is 'forest & fog'; the fog is made by the fog sculpturer (!) Fujiko Nakaya.

Beautiful Art World

Feminist artist Mika Rottenberg's new video installation 'Squeeze' (2010) debuted in July and runs until 3 October 2010 at the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). The video installation 'Squeeze' is about the contemporary art market which is compared by the artist to the working condition of female laborers in a fictional makeup factory. By showing the live circumstances of laborers who are socially, culturally, and geographically far from the consumers, Mika Rottenberg broadens our view on the ‘beautiful’ art world.

Video (posted in March 2008 on occasion of the Whitney Biennial): The documentary shows feminist multimedia artist Mika Rottenberg in her studio in Harlem (New York) and some scenes from her installation 'Cheese' where women are caring for their long hairs and producing as farm workers cheese. In the video, Mika Rottenberg (1976 in Argentina born, in Israel raised, and now in New York based) speaks about her work.

The Cache 'Body'

The Kunsthaus Bregenz has invited Fashionoffice to the press conference on occasion of the landscape installation 'Antony Gormley. Horizon Field' on 31 July 2010 on the Kriegeralpe in Lech (map) in the Alps of Vorarlberg, Austria.

Until April 2012, British artist Antony Gormley's 100 life-size iron figures of the human body are installed in an area of 150 square kilometres. The installation focuses on the relational aspect that humans experience in their lives. For Antony Gormley, the human body is a place of memory and transformation - like the caches which we are using mostly unconsciously but permanently while working on a computer and in the online world. The artist exposes the iron figures and involves the elements and the seasons to work further on his sculptures that will change through the times their appearance for the viewer.

The Kunsthaus Bregenz quotes Antony Gormley (April 2010): "It asks basic questions: who are we, what are we, where do we come from and to where are we headed?

Fig.: Exhibition 'Antony Gormley. Horizon Field' in the High-Alps in Vorarlberg (Austria), presented by Kunsthaus Bregenz from August 2010 until April 2012. (C) Antony Gormley and Kunsthaus Bregenz. Photo: Markus Tretter. The figures look in all directions but never face each other. The video from 1986 shows how Antony Gormley is creating the sculptures.

Source: Original article with images and video on https://www.fashion.at/culture/2010/beauty7-2010.htm.


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