CLEMENS KRAUSS

Curator: Lena Ganahl

“More general social, political and cultural processes can be made palpable not only through the application of psychoanalytic transference onto a canvas, for example, but also to the overall situation of an art exhibition, for instance through the language and the voice of the persons involved.” (Clemens Krauss)

In his art, Clemens Krauss starts out from a “universal” body, which is not defined through the individual work of art, but as the relationship between artist, observer and especially the conditions in which art is produced. The art object thus constitutes the third element between artist and observer. Equally, the artist’s biographical reference is imminent in his concept of art. Thus he communicates with the conventional white cube, among other things, with the help of self-made video material from his childhood, paintings, but also by means of participatory performance, consisting of the offer to undergo a psychoanalytic session with the artist.

For Kunstraum Innsbruck, Clemens Krauss has conceived a series of rooms presenting anteroom situations that only apparently lead to an exhibition room proper. All through the Kunstraum premises, the visitors stroll from one individual, variable anteroom to another, to linger and look at artworks from various work groups. The quintessential anteroom thus is presented as a waiting and expectation room that enters into a dialogue with the visitor’s viewing habits and points of view. In one of these rooms, the only one that is to be entered by one person only and is not a walk-through room, Clemens Krauss holds psychoanalytic single sessions with exhibition visitors. (Session slots are available from Sept 21 to Oct 5, during regular opening hours; appointments for the free sessions can be made via e-mail to sitzung@kunstraum-innsbruck.at or directly via the gallery; visitors can book up to five single sessions.)

Under professional therapeutic conditions, such as a strict adherence to confidentiality, this treatment room becomes a room created through social interaction, both thanks to the artist and the visitor entering the analytic-therapeutic process and to their taking on reciprocal roles. Not only the visitors undergo treatment here, but also the artist, which latter again is the precondition for the never-ending process of artistic knowledge and insight as well as artworks being produced. Even though the artist is present himself, the observer uses his/her experience with the aesthetic object for a dialogue with him/herself, which grows into a dialogue with the artist’s inner world about the work of art. Accordingly, the observer’s inner, unconscious dialogue might be seen as a conversation the artist indirectly is party to.

The concept of the rooms following each other becomes a symbol for the artist’s own realm of experience and expectation and his artistic practice. Just as the observer, through the therapeutic session, undergoes a symbolic self-realisation, to stick to the specialised terminology, Krauss provides an insight into his cultural and social socialisation, which for its part determines his artistic practice. Thus the work of the artist, and the sequence of rooms resulting from it, represents the conflicts and frictions of self-realisation and leaves the observer, in the best case, to stagger through the rooms in the service of knowledge gain. As the analytic experience presupposes a lack (Lacan), and the latter will only be removed through the mutual involvement of artist, artwork and observer, it is only natural that the impressions from the single sessions also successively are incorporated into the rooms designed by the artist.

CLEMENS KRAUSS
works on a concept of contemporary man as a performative embodiment of social and media experience. He refers to the human body as a metaphor of society, religion and sexuality and accordingly conceives of it as a political projection surface. Besides his art studies, Clemens Krauss, born in Graz in 1981, also studied medicine and completed training as a psychoanalyst.

At Kunstraum Innsbruck, Krauss presents his first solo exhibition at an Austrian art institution. So far, his work has been shown in the context of solo presentations at prestigious galleries and museums abroad, e.g. Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; MARTa Herford, Germany; SMAK Gent, Belgium; Museum of Contemporary Art Chengdu, China; Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel; Artport, Tel Aviv, Israel; MAMA, Museu de Arte Moderna Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Moreover, Clemens Krauss was the only Austrian representative at the Havana Biennial in 2019.


Text: Karin Pernegger   

EVENTS DURING THE EXHIBITION

OPENING
20.09.19, 19:00
RECEPTION


SEETINGS
21.09. - 06.10.19
RECEPTION
with Clemens Krauss by arrangement

CURATOR'S GUIDED TOUR
05.10.19, 20:00
RECEPTION
as part of the Long Night of Museums,
with Clemens Krauss

ARTIST TALK
08.11.19, 15:00
SUPERVISION
as part of the premiere days,
with Clemens Krauss speaking via live link

Note: The exhibition Clemens Krauss – Vorzimmer | reception is the last exhibition in 2019 to be initiated by the former director of Kunstraum Innsbruck, Karin Pernegger, and the former chairman, Lothar Tirala.