NORBERT BRUNNER was born in Hohenems, Vorarlberg Austria.After being raised in Vorarlberg he served a joinery apprenticeship and attended a vocational school for sculpture in Elbigenalp, Tyrol. He studied sculpting on the University of Applied Arts Vienna with professor Wander Bertoni. He also had been influenced by Oswald Oberhuber, Bernhard Leitner, Franz Graf and Isabelle Graw.His works are part of important museum collections like the 21 Haus in Vienna, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the Vorarlberger Landesmuseum.
Brunner creates opulent, reflective works that confront viewers with messages of empowerment. His signature pieces are made from a combination of Plexiglas, mirrors, and Swarovski crystals; their surfaces are such that the viewer’s reflection is thrust into the composition, which to Brunner is the final realization of his creative process. Rendered in crystals, his titular phrases, like “anticipate greatness” and “visualize the extraordinary,” are illegible unless the viewer faces his works straight on; he sometimes heightens this sense of confrontation by including a giant pair of eyes in his pieces, as if watching for reaction. For Brunner, the multivalent inclusion of the viewer is an explicit statement on the inherent subjectivity of all art: “Everything seen, perceived, and experienced, all forms of art, culture, and politics are relative and depend only on the beholder’s point of view…
FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY” Artist statement solo show in Funnel Contemporary gallery Belgrade, 3rd June 2022 In times like these, I want to react as an artist, to be a mirror of my surroundings. It is important to me not to take a politically judgmental position, as it would be impossible for me to do so without being judgmental in a negative sense. I take the position of “the beauty of being different”. To respect and value the other. To do this, you need courage to take responsibility for your own thoughts and actions again. I miss an education of emotional and social intelligence in our modern school system. The focus in our current system lies in the rational intelligence, which pursues a rating system, and thus promotes any form of “fear”. We are thus developing a society that is constantly afraid of doing the wrong thing and is then supposed to take responsibility for it, which causes uncertainty in the future. We are not trained to recognize our needs and live by them. So can we even recognize our talent to live our individual being? I see this as a huge waste of potential, which is there but not used. The real virus for me is “fear”, which needs to be got under control, because it paralyzes the positive potential of the individual.
Galerija Funnel Contemporary u saradnji sa Austriskim Kulturnim Forumom priređuje samostalnu izložbu umetnika Norbert Brunner-a u izlagačkom prostoru Galerije Funnel Contemporary na Dorćolu u ulici Dunavska 21 a otvarnje događaja je predviđeno za 03.Jun u 20:00 časova.
Norbert Brunner (rođen 1969., Hohenems, Austrija) je austrijski konceptualni umetnik. Brunnerovi radovi su veoma pažljivo rađeni objekti od materijala kao što su akrilno staklo,klirit, kliritno ogledalo.Pecizno štampane tačke na akrilnom staklu pedantno složene na nekoliko akrilnih površina daju trodiminzijalnu sliku njegovim radovima.Često na njegovim radovima susrećemo poruke koje nas podstiču na razmišljanje.
Rečenice ili čak par reči u kombinaciji sa pažljivo izabranim fotografijama koje umetnik naknadno transformiše u detaljno raspoređene tačke on nastoji da nam na taj način replicira njegov doživljaj datog umetničkog dela.
Često gledajući njegov rad stiče se utisak da umetnik ima nameru da nas podseti na snagu sublimativnih poruka koje vešto sakrivene najstoje da nas osvoje kroz našu znatiželjnu prirodu u otkrivanju dela koje stoji ispred nas. Norbert generira objekte iz “izvora” svakodnevnog života i prenosi perceptivne strukture koje pozivaju gledaoca da učestvuje u stvaranju datog doživljaja na njemu svojstven način.
Norbert Brunner je diplomirao na akademiji primijenjenih umjetnosti u Beču. Trenutno živi i radi na relaciji Beč – Njujork. Njegovi radovi su uvršteni u značajne kolekcije širom sveta kao što su : New Britain Museum of American Art – Connecticut,USA, CT 21c Museum, Louiosville – USA, The Museum of Arts and Design – New York,USA, NY LMU Eye Hospital – Munich, Germany, Artothek Austria 21 Haus, Vienna – Austria , Belvedere 21, Vienna – Austria, MUSA Museum Vienna – Austria… i mnogi druge kolekcije.
Domenico de Chirico is an independent curator from Italy. Born in Bari in 1983, he lives and works in Milan. From 2011 until 2015 he was a professor in “Visual Culture” and “Trend Research” at Milan’s European Institute of Design (IED). He collaborates with a number of international artists, galleries, institutions, art fairs, art prizes, and magazines worldwide. He has been artistic director at DAMA Fair, Turin since 2016.
Sind doch gleich zwei österreichische Künstler derzeit in den an einer Hand abzählbaren Orten für zeitgenössische Kunst in Serbiens Hauptstadt vertreten: Erwin Wurm hat eine Riesenschau im Museum für Gegenwartskunst, seine größte bisher überhaupt, „Die Presse“ wird berichten. Das im Vergleich dazu winzige Gegenprogramm bestreitet Norbert Brunner, der gar nicht so wenige seiner Spiegelarbeiten im neuen Artist-Run-Off-Space „Funnel“ in einem charmanten, fast griechisch wirkenden Hinterhof am Hafen ausstellt.
02.06.2022 um 12:42
After all, two Austrian artists are currently represented in the places for contemporary art in the Serbian capital that can be counted on one hand: Erwin Wurm has a huge show in the Museum of Contemporary Art, his biggest ever, “Die Presse” will report. The comparatively tiny counter-program is denied by Norbert Brunner, who is exhibiting quite a few of his mirror works in the new artist run-off space “Funnel” in a charming, almost Greek-looking backyard at the harbour.
RIBOCA2 Riga, Latvia Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art
RIBOCA2 and suddenly it all blossoms 16 MAY – 11 OCTOBER 2020
The second edition of RIBOCA will be curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel. The Biennial will bring together 60 international and regional artists and creators whose works challenge traditional definitions of art, expanding its usual territories by working and thinking beyond disciplines. Spreading across Riga’s parks, former industrial sites, wastelands, domestic houses, monuments, restaurants, hotels and harbours, the Biennial, following the principles of entanglement, embraces the pulse and rhythm of the transforming ecosystem of the city.
RIBOCA2 will look to re-enchantment as a frame for building desirable futures, to reimagine ways of being human in a context of deep ecological, economic and social mutation. Against cynicism and political despair, transforming fear into possibility and peril into exuberance, the Biennial will seek alternative actions, thoughts and narratives in the perspective of common futures. Can art offer alternative models for the way we inhabit Earth?
RIBOCA2 and suddenly it all blossoms
RIBOCA2 2nd edition curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel Press and professional preview: Thursday 14 May – Friday 15 May 2020 RIBOCA2 open to public: Saturday 16 May – Sunday 11 October 2020 Brīvības 33 – 8, Rīga, LV-1010 Latvia https://www.rigabiennial.com/
Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Until a thousand roses bloom (with Warsaw in the background), 2018, Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation. Photo Spyros Rennt
The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) is an international biennial with a European focus and a strong regional profile, founded in 2016. Taking the rich history of Riga and the Baltic states as its underlying framework, the Biennial highlights the artistic landscape of the wider region and creates opportunities for artists to enter into dialogue with the cultural, historical and socio-political context of the city and its geographic surrounds.
Taking into account criticisms of the proliferation of biennial culture, or ‘biennialisation’ as it has been called, RIBOCA aims to create a sustainable model based on best practices that prioritise artists, artistic production and the meticulous presentation and mediation of art. The Biennial is based on a working process that starts from the local, expanding to the national and the regional, and finally to the transnational. The Biennial aims to take root and make roots in the place where it is situated. Reflecting the biennial’s global outlook and mission to increase artistic engagement between the Baltic region and the rest of the world, a significant proportion of the commissioned and selected artists either live, work or were born in the Baltic region, a territory which still remains relatively unexplored despite its prolific artistic production.
RIBOCA sees itself as a critical site of artistic experimentation and knowledge production, an activator of co-operation and exchange between local and regional actors and institutions, an instigator of generosity towards peers, and a barometer of current social, political and economic issues filtered through artistic practices.
microRIBOCA
The inter-season programme of RIBOCA, microRIBOCA has been developed to foster a feeling of belonging to a particular place among Rigans and to free their creative potential that is present in everyday life in the public space of the city. It will offer interdisciplinary public art projects and urban exploration walks providing Rigans with instruments of social involvement useful for urban revitalization.
RIBOCA2: and suddenly it all blossoms Curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel Humanity is now at a crossroads and all signs call for a new epoch. Seeking an alternative to the deluge of hopeless narratives, the second edition of Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA2), curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, looks to re-enchantment as a frame for building desirable futures, to reimagine ways of being human in a context of deep ecological, economic and social mutation. “The end of the world” has always haunted mankind. But while in previous tales, the apocalypse was provoked by some exterior phenomenon, an asteroid or plague befalling the Earth, current scientific reports attest that humans are solely responsible for the mass extinction to come. Against cynicism and political despair, transforming fear into possibility and peril into exuberance, the Biennial seeks alternative actions, thoughts and narratives in the perspective of common futures. Can art offer alternative models for the way we inhabit Earth? The Biennial finds inspiration from Riga, Latvia and the Baltics, where “worlds have ended” many times in its history, having undergone occupations, wars and economical flux. These conditions cultivated inspired practices of resilience that culminated in the surreal human chain of two million citizens, a 600 km social sculpture, linking Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius in 1989. Riga and the Baltics have also been a zone of cultural entanglement for centuries, a bridge at the confluence of territories, where sensitivities and ideologies have been assembled and enmeshed since its very inception. The Biennial will bring together 60 international and regional artists and creators whose works challenge traditional definitions of art, expanding its usual territories by working and thinking beyond disciplines. Spreading across Riga’s parks, former industrial sites, wastelands, domestic houses, monuments, restaurants, hotels and harbours, the Biennial, following the principles of entanglement, embraces the pulse and rhythm of the transforming ecosystem of the city.
RIBOCA2 Chief Curator REBECCA LAMARCHE-VADE
Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel is a French curator and writer, former curator at Palais de Tokyo (2012 – 2019). Her internationally critically acclaimed projects include the solo exhibitions of Tomás Saraceno, Tino Sehgal, Marguerite Humeau, Ed Atkins, David Douard, Helen Marten, François Curlet and Jon Rafman. ON AIR by Tomás Saraceno (2018-2019) spanned the entire 13000m2 of the Palais de Tokyo and became the most attended exhibition in its history, while the carte blanche to Tino Sehgal (2016) was the largest live-art show ever presented worldwide. In 2015 she presented the group show Le bord des mondes (The edge of the worlds), which focused on the limits of the territories of art after the writings of Marcel Duchamp. Lamarche-Vadel has regularly collaborated with international institutions, such as the Château de Versailles with Voyage d’Hiver(associate curator, 2017), the 11th Bamako Biennale (curatorial advisory, 2017-2018), MoMA PS1 with the projects Truce (2013) and Bright Intervals (2014), the Stedelijk Museum and Trouw with Landscape (2013), and the 12th Biennale de Lyon with Unachieved Presents (Resonance, 2013). A graduate in History, Political Sciences and Art History at the Sorbonne, she regularly coordinates and participates in seminars, juries and talks worldwide, and her writings have appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Monopol, Mousse, Cura, and l’Officiel Art, amongst others. She is the 2019 guest curator of FIAC special projects.
RIBOCA2 – CURATORIAL STATEMENT Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel “The end of the world” has always haunted mankind. But while in previous tales, apocalypse was provoked by some exterior phenomenon, an asteroid or plague befalling the Earth, current scientific reports attest that humans are solely responsible for the mass extinction to come. Humanity is now at the cross-roads and all signs call for a new epoch. Seeking an alternative to the deluge of hopeless narratives, the second edition of Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA2), curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, looks to re-enchantment as a frame for building desirable futures, to reimagine ways of being human in a context of deep ecological, economical and social mutation. How can we construct an inclusive society of entangled solidarities between beings? How to reconsider our culture when it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism? Which mythologies could replace the narratives of progress that dominated modernity? And can art offer alternative models for the way we inhabit the Earth? The Biennial engages with our mental landscapes, encouraging poetic reinvention, asserting the potential for art to dialogue with the challenges and complexities of the world around us. The Earth, humans, non humans and matters are part of a vast interconnected network in which we can no longer play a central dominating role. Our constant exchanges with other presences, from micro to macro scales, confirm our hybrid, interdependent position within the bigger assembly of the living. The notion of collective re-enchantment means listening more carefully to these rhythms, looking more closely at other trajectories, being aware of longer timescales and the invisible architectures that animate the world. Against cynicism and political despair, transforming fear into possibility and peril into exuberance, the Biennial seeks alternative actions, thoughts and narratives in the perspective of common futures. The Biennial finds inspiration from Riga, Latvia and the Baltics, where “worlds have ended” many times in recent and distant history. Amidst occupations, wars, and economical flux, the region has undergone radical changes and rebirths. These conditions cultivated inspired practices of resilience, amongst them poetry, ritual and song, signs of a groundswell that culminated in the surreal human chain of two million citizens, a 600 km social sculpture, linking Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius in 1989. Riga and the Baltics have also been a zone of cultural entanglement for centuries, a bridge at the confluence of territories, where sensitivities and ideologies have been assembled and enmeshed since its very inception. The Biennial will bring together 60 visionary international and regional artists and creators whose works challenge traditional definitions of art, expanding its usual territories by working and thinking beyond disciplines. Their researches question established conventions, becoming catalysts for alternative ways of looking, listening and feeling. Spreading across Riga’s parks, former industrial sites, wastelands, domestic houses, monuments, restaurants, hotels and harbours, the Biennial, following the principles of entanglement, embraces the pulses and rhythms of the transforming ecosystem of the city.
Riboca1 2018 performances at LLMC -Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art Foto: estherartnewsletter.com
RIBOCA2 participants: Pawel Althamer* / Kristaps Ancāns* / Alex Baczynski-Jenkins* / Nina Beier* / Oliver Beer / Hicham Berrada* / Dora Budor* / Eglė Budvytytė* / Valdis Celms* / Emanuele Coccia / CAConrad / Lorraine Daston / Edith Dekyndt* / Vinciane Despret / Erika Eiffel* / Vija Eniņa* / Miķelis Fišers* / Heinz Frank* / Monica Gagliano / Cyprien Gaillard* / Bendik Giske* / Honkasalo-Niemi-Virtanen* (Felicia Honkasalo, Akuliina Niemi, Sinna Virtanen) / Katrin Hornek* / Pierre Huyghe / Marguerite Humeau / IevaKrish* (Krišjānis Sants, Ieva Gaurilčikaitė) / Institute of the Cosmos: Anton Vidokle, Arseny Zhilyaev, Marina Simakova / Mikhail Karikis / Agnese Krivade* / Lina Lapelytė* / Hanne Lippard* / Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing / Mikhail Maksimov* / Mareunrol’s* (Mārīte Mastiņa-Pēterkopa, Rolands Pēterkops) / Berenice Olmedo* / Dominika Olszowy* / Sarah Ortmeyer* / Philippe Petit / Bridget Polk* / Paul B. Preciado / Tobias Rees / Ugo Rondinone / Jaanus Samma* / Tomás Saraceno*/ Boaventura de Sousa Santos / Ashley Hans Scheirl* / Augustas Serapinas* / Timur Si-Qin* / Nikolay Smirnov* / Anastasia Sosunova* / Daina Taimiņa*
ABOUT RIBOCA The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) is an international biennial with a European focus and a strong regional profile, founded in 2016. Taking the rich history of Riga and the Baltic states as its underlying framework, the biennial highlights the artistic landscape of the wider region and creates opportunities for artists to enter into dialogue with the cultural, historical and socio-political context of the city and its geographic surrounds.
Taking into account criticisms of the proliferation of biennial culture, or ‘biennialisation’ as it has been called, RIBOCA aims to create a sustainable model based on best practices that prioritise artists, artistic production and the meticulous presentation and mediation of art. The Biennial is based on a working process that starts from the local, expanding to the national and the regional, and finally to the transnational. The Biennial aims to take root and make roots in the place where it is situated. Reflecting the biennial’s global outlook and mission to increase artistic engagement between the Baltic region and the rest of the world, a significant proportion of the commissioned and selected artists either live, work or were born in the Baltic region, a territory which still remains relatively unexplored despite its prolific artistic production.
RIBOCA sees itself as a critical site of artistic experimentation and knowledge production, an activator of co-operation and exchange between local and regional actors and institutions, an instigator of generosity towards peers, and a barometer of current social, political and economic issues filtered through artistic practices.
RIBOCA FOUNDATION The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) was founded as a major initiative of the Riga Biennial Foundation, its commissioning body. The Founder and Commissioner of the Riga Biennial Foundation, Agniya Mirgorodskaya, developedRIBOCA in order to set up a new global platform for international and Baltic artists, to promote contemporary art and provide educational and community support within the region, as well as to increase artistic engagement between the Baltic region and the rest of the world.
Riga has been an important trading post since the Middle Ages, and during the late 19th and 20th centuries, Latvia has served as a significant industrial base. Latvia’s historical relations with Sweden, Russia, Poland and Germany have put it at the crossroads of different cultures and ideologies, with its gaze shifting between East and West. RIBOCAcharts the particular psychogeography of this region within the new world order at a time of major global shifts.
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