ArtViews by Patrick
Olafur Eliasson
Ok, I never saw a work by Olafur Eilasson myself but just reading about "The Weather Project" at the Tate Modern really made wishing to go there. I just read about him in The New Yorker and it seems like there are many more works coming soon so probably you won't get around him in the future.
Tags: installation sculpture iceland denmark berlinGerhard Richter
Here's an art star that I never knew what to make of. Thinking of it I probably don't like him because his works are huge and direct. I think I like more the subtler art. Seeing the different shades of gray (huge reflecting slabs of gray glass) didn't relate to anything in me.
Tags: germany paintingPipilotti Rist
Do you know the video where a woman walks down a street in slow motion, swings a stick (sort of a model of a big flower) and smashes a car window while a cop goes by and a soft melody plays. Well I like it very much but I saw it in at least three museums giving me the impression that either there aren't that many good works of here around. But I may be wrong, because there is the tiny screen in the floor of the PS1 with a woman looking up and screaming and then there was the work of paradise at the Venice Biennale 2005 projected on the ceiling of a church that show that she is really great making site specific work. Maybe the curators just have problems fitting here in the standard black video box...
Tags: video switzerlandRoy Lichtenstein
I think Roy Lichtenstein was great for including comic-type art into the art world. But the reason I only find his work mediocre is that it just gets boring. You saw it so often as posters and in museums and it the paintings are made so clear and clean that you can't find anything new in them. At least I can't.
Tags: popart newyorkChristian Jankowski
For me Christian Jankowski is the best of the younger German artists. His videos are made with irony but get you thinking. Like the one he made for the Venice Biennale where he called fortuneteller on Italian TV and asked them how his next work of art would be - this being the video. Or the one where he goes through a supermarket shooting the food with bow and arrow.
Tags: video berlin germany ironyAndy Warhol
The problem I have with Warhol is that sort everybody thinks he knows what he is about. Marylins, Soup Cans and so forth. So when I discover things I never saw like the 18 hour film of the Empire State Building, I'm really surprised. I like the concept of the projector not sending an edited film to the wall but a picture that is like a window. I hope I will discover some more stuff in that direction.
Tags: popart newyork video painting starSol LeWitt
Ok, so he is one of the big artists. Well, I don't care, because the conceptional work I saw was mostly boring. Yeah, the thought of covering whole walls based on a logic principal of changing pencil lines like the one at the Dia:Beacon may have seemed like a great concept. But why did have people carry out the concept.
Tags: conceptualmonochrom
A group of youngish artists based in Vienna, doing performances, installations, videos, a fanzine, a web site and much more. Their pieces are often ironic. They once did a demonstration for the IT-industry through Munich. Check out www.monochrom.at!
Tags: irony group vienna performance installation video web fanzine austria