PURE WATER the Most Valuable Resource in the World

Information Sheet

PURE WATER
The Most Valuable Resource in the World

3 October 2014 to 15 February 2015

Contents

Exhibition Facts ……………………………………………………………..……………….. 3

Exhibition Text ..…………………….……………………………………………….…….… 4

Exhibition Booklet Texts …………………………………………………………………..... 5

Press Images ………………………………………………………………………………..... 17

Exhibition Facts

Exhibition Title PURE WATER. The Most Valuable Resource in the World

Exhibition Period 3 October 2014 to 15 February 2015

Opening Thursday, 2 October 2014, 7 pm

Press Conference Thursday, 2 October 2014, 11 am

Exhibition Venue LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, big hall, first floor

Curators Stella Rollig, Magnus Hofmüller

Exhibits About 150 works (paintings, photographs, graphic works,

videos, sculptures, objects and installations by 58 artits and artist groups

Catalogue The exhibition is accompanied by by the publication Reines Wasser. Die kostbarste Ressource der Welt. Edited in Verlag Jung und Jung. With texts in German language by Margareta Sandhofer, Angelika Reitzer, Klaus Rinke (Interview), Peter Dreher (Interview), Ursula Biemann, Annie Ratti, The Yes Men, Elisabeth Nowak-Thaller, Bill Viola, Bertolt Brecht, Louise Bourgeois (including photo gallery).
160 pages, 4c, hardcover, price: € 22

Exhibition Booklet A free exhibition booklet with information on all exhibits is available in German and English language.

Sponsors

Contact Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1, 4020 Linz, Tel. +43(0)732/7070-3600;

, www.lentos.at

Opening Hours Tue–Sun 10am to 6pm, Thur 10am to 9pm, Mon closed

Admission € 8, concessions € 6,50

Press Contact Nina Kirsch, Tel. +43(0)732/7070-3603,

Available at the Press Conference:

Klaus Luger, Mayor of the City of Linz

Bernhard Baier, Deputy Mayor and Head of Municipal Department of Culture

Stella Rollig, Director LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz and Curator

Seite 2

Magnus Hofmüller, Curator

Exhibition Text

Water, a resource that is a precondition for life like no other, is increasingly coming under pressure for ecological as well as economic reasons. Water keeps us alive, water is in need of protection as a public good. Pure water is also an emotional resource and a prime ingredient for wellbeing and happiness.

The 1960s saw the beginning of two developments that continue to make water a fascinating subject for art to this day. On one hand, socially relevant themes such as ecology moved to the fore in artistic projects and, on the other, the fluid, changeable, elusive aspects of water lend themselves to an enlarged sculptural practice. Artists use water in its different states of aggregation as a material. Water is synonymous with a high quality of life. It is indispensable for cleaning, bathing, swimming and central to religious and spiritual rites. The struggle against pollution and against exploiting water as simply another economic resource is essential.

Artists accompany this struggle, comment on it and take part in it. This is an exhibition that

features the economic, social, emotional and aesthetic aspects of an indispensable element.

Exhibition Booklet Texts

INTRODUCTION

This exhibition puts on show aspects of the manifold roles water plays in life and in art. Its main purpose is to demonstrate that water is far more than a means to an end and that lack of clean water fundamentally undermines the quality of life. This booklet provides information on selected works in the exhibition, grouped together in sections that coincide with the chapters of the exhibition. It is designed to provide assistance for your own personal approach to the works of art.

AUFTAKT

Kenneth Anger

b. 1927, Santa Monica, California

lives in Los Angeles, USA

Eaux d’artifice, 1953

Courtesy Kenneth Anger

13 Min.

A bodily union with water forms the final climax of Kenneth Anger’s film Eaux d’artifice. The avant-garde filmmaker, who has described himself as the first openly homosexual filmmaker, makes skilful use of the the Villa d’Este’s will o’ the wisp inducing waterplay structures in Tivoli to restore a mystical quality to water. The element is credited with passions, desires and other characteristics

normally reserved to human beings. In the nocturnal spectacle a female figure in ornate 18th century costume makes her way past waterfalls and waterspouting fountains. The figure seems to be obsessed with the fountains and is trying in vain to get away from them; in the end she is united with water in a grotto. The soundtrack – music by the baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi –

enhances the surreal effect of the dreamlike sequences. Water is at the same time an uncanny agent and an emblem of sexual obsession. MS

Andreas Gursky

b. 1955, Leipzig, Germany

lives in Düsseldorf, Germany

Bangkok V, 2011

Sammlung HGN

Gursky’s river portrait from the Bangkok series depicts the Chao Phraya as an unbounded surface. At first sight the photo gives an impression of abstract beauty reminiscent of paintings by Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still. The photographed surface is pitch black and shiny, like the surface of viscous tar, oil or silt. The black is shot through with bursts of light: jagged strips or erratic patches, the reflexions of an illuminated metropolis. The interspersed objects that catch the light are garbage transported across the city by the river. The river is the mirror image of the metropolis: scintillating in its allure on one hand, on the other – and more pertinently – an unsavoury watery mess. Below its glossy surface it is abysmal and ghostlike. In this light the river becomes a chilling symbol of the (allegedly) modern urban lifestyle. MS

Clare Richardson

b. 1970, Shropshire, UK

lives in Wales, UK

Harlemville, 2000

Courtesy Clare Richardson

Water clean enough to be drinkable: a boy in swimming trunks is lying on his tummy on a bank and is about to lap up some water. His image is reflected on the water’s surface. The photo was shot in a Rudolf Steiner association in Harlemville, New York. When she first visited the idyllic place in May 2000 Richardson fell under the spell of the peaceful life there. Educated according to the principles of Waldorf pedagogy, the children consistently displayed a profound respect for nature. In the two years the photographer spent observing them through the lens of her camera she made friends with the families living there. DS

DREAMS AND MEMORIES

Dreams about swimming are rather like dreams about flying: they’re improbable, weightless, free. Below the mysterious surface of an opaque body of water lurk dreams and memories. Asta Gröting has her dancer swirl round in pirouettes on a watery surface while the world is standing on its head. Similarly enchanted places are Bill Viola’s water basin, where time both stands still and

continues to unfurl, and Werner Schrödl’s pond in the woods with its strange visitors. Louise Bourgeois has stories about memories linked to water with which she memorializes the river of her childhood. Kaucyila Brooke’s dazzling waterfalls cut into the heart like the pain at having to part with a beloved person like the one to whom the artist has dedicated this series.

Roni Horn

b. 1955, New York, USA

lives in New York, USA and Reykjavik, Iceland

Still Water (The River Thames, for Example) – Images G, E, H, 1999

On loan from the artist, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth

In the photo series Still Water (The River Thames, for Example) Horn concentrates on the specificities of the appearance exhibited by water surfaces: their endlessly varied relief, their almost undefinable colour nuances, the reflections of light dancing on them. The artist has added numbers in small print that lead to footnotes containing her comment: thoughts and chains of thought that appear almost out of nowhere and take up their place next to each other. They condense speculations on the Thames as an incarnation of the river and deal with its story,

with Horn’s own story and with metaphysical reflections on the nature of water as such. They conjure up the poetical universe of an intrinsic relation between the artist, the river and its parent element, water. MS

Louise Bourgeois

b. 1911, Paris, France

d.. 2010, New York, USA

Ode à la Bièvre, 2007

Donation by Louise Bourgeois‘ The Easton Foundation to the Centre Pompidou Foundation

When Bourgeois was nine years old her family moved to Antony on the outskirts of Paris. The Bièvre flowed through the garden of the property. Water was an essential precondition for her parents to be able to ply their trade, which was the restoration of textiles and involved a great deal of washing and dying. Even at that early age Louise proved helpful by designing fabric patterns and realizing them. In her oeuvre, textiles, childhood and, above all, her conflict laden relationship with her father were to remain themes of perennial interest. In 2002 Bourgeois stitched together a unique art book from collages made from her own clothes. She uses text and image to convey the memories and emotions that attach for her to the Bièvre. When years after the completion of this work Bourgeois returned to the site of her childhood memories she realized that the river she remembered so clearly had become invisible. On its way towards Paris the Bièvre has been forced underground. AB

Kaucyila Brooke

b. 1952, Oregon City, USA

lives in Los Angeles, USA

The Last Time I Saw You, 2012

Galerie Andres Huber, Wien

Waterfalls in California and Oregon have supplied the motifs for The Last Time I Saw You, the rather poetically titled series of landscape photographs. The title leaves much unsaid. What happened when the artist saw that person the last time? What kind of memories are associated with those landscapes? Was it all about saying farewell? The symbolism traditionally associated with waterfalls (in art, for instance, or in the interpretation of dreams) is here underscored through means uniquely at the disposal of the photographer: Brooke zooms into her landscapes to move them really close to the observer, making them appear downright overwhelming. The spurts of water are dazzlingly white, like manifestations of light verging on the supernatural. It is almost as if the object was the creation of heroic landscapes of the type we know from the painter Josef Anton Koch. Or the creation of a personal mnemonic device to facilitate recolletion.

Brooke has made these photos with an analog large-format camera. She used long exposure times and developed the negatives herself in a darkroom – a nostalgic enterprise in an age when analog photography has almost totally been superseded by digital for quite some time. DS

Bill Viola (Video Room)

b. 1951, New York, USA

lives in Long Beach, California, USA

The Reflecting Pool, 1977–79

7 Min., Courtesy Bill Viola

A man emerges from the forest and stands before a pool of water. He leaps up and time suddenly stops. All movement and change in the otherwise still scene is limited to the reflections and undulations on the surface of the pond. Time becomes extended and punctuated by a series of events seen only as reflections in the water. The work describes the emergence of the individual

into the natural world, a baptism into a world of virtual images and indirect perceptions. Bill Viola

ON SWIMMING

There is nothing below the sun that quite compares to the pleasures of immersing oneself in water.

Swimming is synonymous with zest for life, intense body awareness, freedom from care. In affluent countries, being able to bathe in clean water is an invariable indicator of a high quality of life. Austria, as is well known, uses the drinking-water quality of its bathing lakes to make itself appear even more attractive to tourists. However, purity is in the eye of the beholder. In Linz the proposal of going for a swim in the Danube is likely to meet with a divided response, depending on people’s assessment of the water quality. It’s unlikely that someone from Europe would fancy a dip in the Ganges but extensive ablutions in the river are a requisite in most Indian religions. The heavy pollution of the Chao Phraya, depicted by Andreas Gursky as a dark beauty, does not deter the Thais living on and with the river from diving in.

Jacques Henri Lartigue

b. 1894, Courbevoie, France

d. 1986, Nice, France

Dédé, Rouzat, 1911

LENTOS Kunstmuseum

Visibly without a care in the world, Lartigue’s cousin André Haguet a.k.a. Dédé dives into the water in front of the camera. The photo dates from 1911. The child’s encounter with the water appears perfectly natural, a pure manifestation of his zest for life. It is equally untouched by acrobatics or excessive bravado and by worries about the pollution of water that still lie ahead at that time in

the distant future.

The spontaneous dynamic of the dive receives additional momentum from the gentle movement of the water surface. The sheer pleasure that water is capable of giving has been captured perfectly by Lartigue’s lens. From the perspective of today the time-hallowed photo is apt to inspire nostalgic sentiments. If we were to fast-forward the scene to our day, what would it look like? In all probability we would find ourselves face to face with a swimming pool made “superhygienic” thanks to chlorine, throbbing to the beat of music and replete with plastic refuse. MS

BODIES

Gerhard Richter’s Badende (Woman, bathing) takes the stage with her head wrapped in a soft, clean towel and her hair still wet below the turban. While Richter obviously cites the motif of the female bather and the distinguished role it has played in art history we see at the same time a quintessential scene characteristic of a well-to-do lifestyle, which involves indulgence in the comfort of one’s own home. Ever since a dedicated bathroom came to be taken for granted in a European home it has been considered to be a place of relaxation and creature comfort.

Yet water can also be used to inflict violence. Regina José Galindo, an artist from Guatemala, stages a brutal scene, in which ablution appears to be a cruel exercise of power. The ruthless self-experiment Chris Burden conducted in the 1970s anticipates waterboarding – a torture method that threatens the victim with drowning – as practised by the US military.