Low Heels
Markus Schinwald
shoe object (size EUR38) made of leather and photograph
photograph: 47.5 × 36.5 cm (framed), shoe object ca. 10 × 22 × 28 cm
1997
Acquisition 2000
Inv. No. 0070abc
Markus Schinwald designs clothes and shoe objects which at first glance look like conventional fashion products, but he derogates from their original function by making – often minimal – interventions. The objects take on a much more sculptural character. With this, the autonomic character of the object is ranked above its utility value; function, sculpture, form, fetish, fashion, props and goods melt together. Part of the work in the evn collection is a colour photograph that consciously stimulates associations with “conventional” advertising messages.
Drawing the borders of functional aesthetics then become more difficult for the viewer – the artist is concerned with precisely this connection between object and (voyeuristic) gaze as found in advertising. Buying-power strengthening messages and images are examined by using their “own” language. For example, Low Heels works as antonymic to the fetishist “high heels”, and thus raises questions related to identity and gender roles in everyday surroundings all the more vigorously.
Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)
Continue readingExhibitions
Für Garderobe wird nicht gehaftet. Widerständiges in Mode und Produktion, AIL - Angewandte Innovation Laboratory , Vienna, 2015
evn collection / institutional presentation, Viennafair, Vienna, 2011
Markus Schinwald, LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, Linz, 2011
Markus Schinwald: Pocket History, Mücsarnok Kunsthalle Budapest, Budapest, 2009
Nach Rokytník. The collection of EVN, MUMOK, Vienna, 2005
Publications
Für Garderobe wird nicht gehaftet. Widerständiges in Mode und Produktion: Magazin #1, Vienna 2015, p. 76
evn sammlung 95–05, Cologne 2005, p. 280 f
Markus Schinwald [Markus Schinwald. Tableau Twain, Frankfurter Kunstverein, 1 September – 24 October 2004, a cooperation between the Frankfurter Kunstverein and the Siemens Arts Program], New York 2004, p. 132, 163
evn sammlung. Ankäufe 1997 – 1999, Maria Enzersdorf 1999, p. 33
Junge Szene - Kinderarbeit [on the occasion of the exhibition at the Secession, Vienna, July 9th – August 30th 1998], Vienna 1998, p. 102