Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien

Valentin Ruhry

16 May - 02 Jun 2013

© Valentin Ruhry
Ohne Titel (für Andrey) , 2012
Detailansicht, Courtesy Christine König Galerie, Wien
VALENTIN RUHRY
Réclamer
16 May - 2 June 2013

The Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien (KM–) is pleased to continue its programme in 2013 by introducing several solo exhibitions. In the downstairs rooms of the KM– venue, the Vienna-based artist Valentin Ruhry (b. 1982 in Graz) is showing his current works.
With the exhibition title réclamer, Valentin Ruhry is roughly referencing advertising or the promotional function actually connoted by light boxes (Latin: reclamare; French: réclamer, to claim, to appeal, to call back). This loss of function is represented by the light-box frames assembled throughout the exhibition, “both through their components and in and of themselves”. Due to their unusual permeability, the objects increasingly thematise the space immediately surrounding them. The light boxes delimit light on walls and ambient light, fostering interactive progressions of light and shadow that are reminiscent of compositions of colour-field painting, of all things. Taking centre stage here seems to be this highlighting of transitions in the dispersal of light in space and the highlighting of gaps on the sculptural object, and, in general, also the reciprocal relationship between aspects of colour and form—in lieu of an analytical update of light art in a broader sense. In calling attention to the shifts between exhibition space that is either “played on” by art or “art-free”, the artist allows the pictorial space to be inverted in the space beyond these spaces through the framing edges of the light boxes. Once again, Valentin Ruhry succeeds in operating along the permeability of the boundaries between the respective inside and outside of disciplines. It is with this approach that he especially succeeds in detecting the threatening enmeshments of referential systems.

Exhibitions (Selection)
Marcel Duchamp and the contemporary readymade, Blain|Southern, London, 2012
Falsche Universalismen, Christine König Galerie, Vienna, 2012
All Work No Play, Austrian Cultural Forum London, 2012
2084, Photoville, New York, 2012
Formless – All Work No Play, Austrian Cultural Forum London, 2011
Moderne: Selbstmord der Kunst?, Neue Galerie Graz, 2011
Gute Aussichten, Moscow Biennale, Moscow, 2011
über dinge, Kunsthaus Muerz, Mürzzuschlag, 2011
EISENBERGER GUMHOLD KARNER RUHRY, Gerberhaus, Fehring, 2011
 

Tags: Marcel Duchamp, Valentin Ruhry