Christian Schwarzwald Christian Schwarzwald

CHRISTIAN SCHWARZWALD - DIE STUMMEN, DIE TAUBEN, DIE BLINDEN

Christian Schwarzwald was one of five extraordinary artists who were selected by the jury from 375 applicants as part of our annual ART AWARD.
Christian Schwarzwald is no longer a stranger, his work has already received great national and international attention. Exhibitions in the Krinzinger Gallery in Vienna since the 1990s have been his springboard. At Art Frankfurt he caused a sensation, galleries in New York, Berlin and Amsterdam showed his work. The Villa Romana Prize, the Senefelder Prize, the Art Prize of the State of Salzburg, the Faistauer Prize are just a few of the awards that the artist, born in Salzburg in 1971, has already received. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and lives and works in Berlin. The Berlin-based artist, born in Salzburg in 1971, is known for his wall installations consisting of paintings, graphics and drawings. The exhibition
“The mute, the deaf, the blind” took place in November 2005.
The collaged and combined works are based on a seemingly provisional concept determined by poetry and chance, which unites reproducibility, irritation and illusionism. The viewer is emotionally and physically integrated into the new space of experience, in which bizarre portraits of humans and animals are combined with timbered, plastered wooden walls and abstract patterns.

The poetic wall installations by Christian Schwarzwald, composed of numerous drawings, testify to the combination of time-critical content with substantial mood images. In a narrative and touching way, the artist leads into new visual dimensions that break the feeling for time and space, the understanding of the past and the future. He places his high-contrast works, intensified through the use of black, red and blue, in the room with tension.

The viewer is not just a consumer. He is required to enter into an active dialogue with the work of art. The system as a whole is embedded in a highly complex environment, of which the space in which it is built represents only one aspect of the complex environmental nesting. The space between the layers of meaning of the visual sign system marks the territory of the image sphere. Thus it becomes, as it were, a cultural space, a space for mental and physical work. This sphere is dialectical, vibrating and pulsating through memory.
Installation art could thus be the embodiment of what we understand by the process of meaning production. This is also the communicative function of the installation. Its conceptually constitutive elements are the imagery, the position of the viewer, the body, the non-identical.
The characteristics of your system are recycling and decoding.
Her space is the territory of transition and displacement from one plane of drawing to another, from image to image sphere. Boundaries are also important for the design of an installation; they fix the exhibited objects, while the production of meaning is accomplished through the experience of the viewer.
Each new installation marks a new origin, with each dismantling the whole is reflected, a chapter is marked. Today we are part of this chapter that Christian Schwarzwald opens for us today.

The mute, the deaf, the blind is a drawing and room installation that he made especially for the Art Lounge. A gray stripe divides the height of the room exactly, 10 framed, collaged works leaned against the wall reinforce the spatial effect.

The collaged, glued drawings and paintings are based on a poetic, provisional concept that combines reproducibility, irritation and illusionism. The viewer is emotionally and physically integrated into the new space of experience, into the space experiment. Drawings of timbered, plastered wooden walls with bizarre portraits of humans and animals collaged on them, as well as abstract patterns are combined here. The raw material wood is the background of the artistic building world.

In the world of installation there is something private and collective. The work of Christian Schwarzwald sees itself as a constant examination of living beings, structures, traces and evidence of the times. It is a staging of a world in which humans and animals try to maintain their own territory and get along with each other. Virtuosity and wit are also included in the title: the mute, the deaf, the blind. If one researches something, one arrives at the Gospel of John where it says: Because you do not have to appear as angry judges, but as truly wise teachers and friends of the blind, deaf and dumb, then they will be guided by you. Or: Oh, you blind people, you deaf ones, you foolish in the heart and in the mind, is a human being worth less than an animal before God?
Schwarzwald does not see his work quite as prophetically, he lets it arise, loosely and casually, but according to recurring criteria of arrangement and subject matter, which he takes to absurdity.

The titles of past installations include: Neighbors, Half Height, Rooms Fulfilled, Enclosure, Antechambre, Filmography, Lobby, Get Lost, Enemy Images. In this way you can get an idea of ​​the mental patterns according to which and also under which social aspects these are built and arranged.

The theme of the neighborhood between humans and animals; from inside and outside, different layers of space occupy the artist. It is very important to him not only to weave hand-drawing, hand-made, but also reproductive media, imitations of artistic techniques. Contrast and the poetry of the pinned loose is in connection with the architectural thought, the space in the room, looking into a framed world of quotations that are just leaning against the wall, reflecting illusionism or illusion as in a backdrop. You first have to make friends with the new, strange, neighbors, the faces taken from magazines, from the Internet, some historical personalities, some strangers. When passing by, one observes from an intended distance the bizarre, cheerful and contemplative world between reality and abstraction, between stability and imbalance. The repetition of different motifs creates a thicket of drawings that shows the variants of a very personal visual language. The color gray runs through the room concept as a stable stripe, promising calm and continuity. In earlier works, the Black Forest has already dealt with historical experiences of space, such as the baroque ceiling picture.

CHRISTIAN SCHWARZWALD

1971 born in Salzburg studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
Lives and works in Berlin

Solo exhibitions

2004  
Antechamber, Derek Eller Gallery, New York
Filmografie; Galerie Koch und Kesslau, Berlin

2003  
Halbe Höhe, Krinzinger Projekte, Wien 
Rooms Fulfilled, Buro Empty, Amsterdam

2002  
Lobby, forever and a day; Büro, Berlin 
Get Lost, supersaat, Wien
Ohne Titel (Fence), mit Lee Taylor, Mülheimer Bunker, Köln

2001  
Wunsch, Indianer zu werden, Kunstraum Steinhude, Wunstorf 
Fussnoten und Anamorphose, Hospitalhof, Stuttgart

2000  
Hintergründe / Remakes, Kulturverein/Museumsverein, Werfen 
Illumination vs. Illustration, Foerderkoje, Inh. Ralf Schmitt, Berlin 
Geisterbahn“, Galerie Krinzinger, Wien 


Group exhibitions

2004  
Cathode Narcissus, loop, Raum für aktuelle Kunst, Berlin 
Agents of fortune, forever and a day Büro, Berlin 
doku/fiction, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
Zwischenoriginal, praxis kunst, Wien 
Koch und Kesslau, Robert Birch Gallery, Toronto 
Playground, Villa Romana, Florenz

2003  
Malerei II Ausstellung Nulldrei, Galerie Nagel, Köln 
Invasion, Handdrawn Maps; Derek Eller Gallery, New York
Villa Romana Prize, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen 
Hangover, the Last Judgement Project, The Rainier Room, Seattle

2002  
Kippen, Foerderkoje, Inh. Ralf Schmitt, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 
Wir wussten schon Bescheid, Wahrscheinlichkeiten, Kunstraum Dornbirn     
Get Lost II, Otto di Segno, Galerie im Traklhaus, Salzburg

2001  
Rundschweigenwälderwunderbar, mit Eva Wagner und Mina Mohandes,
Galerie im Traklhaus, Salzburg;  
Zauber der Zeichnung, Galerie im Traklhaus, Salzburg 
Ohne Titel (Drawings), mit Ulrike Lienbacher, Galerie Krinzinger, Salzburg

2000  
Das Bild des Körpers, Rupertinum, Salzburg 
New Austrian Spotlight; Marmara University, Istanbul 
Die Intelligenz der Hand, Rupertinum, Salzburg 
Feindbilder, Synkopen Amthof, Feldkirchen

Awards and grants

2001  Großer Salzburger Kunstpreis (mit Ulrike Lienbacher und Lois Renner) Budapest Stipendium des Landes Salzburg
2004  Villa Romana Preis, Stipendium in der Villa Romana, Florenz

> Christian Schwarzwald