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Photo: Foto Otto 2 images
R.E.A.L
Heimo Zobernig
acrylic on canvas
123 × 118 cm
1994–1998
Acquisition 1998
Inv. No. 0045
Heimo Zobernig’s artistic origins lie in sculpture. In the case of the wall picture REAL this is of interest. In fact, it is not an object in space, but the relationship of the depicted letters to the colours which form the background that make exactly that thematic.
The viewer immediately notices that letters are not initially perceived as specially-formed colour areas, but rather as signs that stand for something. In REAL, it seems that the concrete meaning of the word in relation to the four-coloured background is a fundamental potential for the content of the picture.
By the end of the word, after a brilliant start on luminous orange, the clear message of REAL has sunk into a mixed shade of background brown close to black.
Zobernig offers us an experience analogous to the discovery that only simplification is really clear, really real, but that complexity, however, clouds our gaze on reality.
Paul Katzberger, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)
Continue readingExhibitions
On To Something New. Three Decades from Schiele to Schlegel from private collections, Landesgalerie Niederösterreich, Krems, 2021
Nach Rokytník. The collection of EVN, MUMOK, Vienna, 2005
There is something you should know. Die EVN Sammlung im Belvedere, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, 2000
Publications
Auf zu Neuem. Drei Jahrzehnte von Schiele bis Schlegel aus Privatbesitz [on the occasion of the exhibition “On To Something New. Three Decades from Schiele to Schlegel from private collections”, Landesgalerie Niederösterreich, March 27th 2021 – February 6th 2022], Weitra 2021, p. 149
evn sammlung 95–05, Cologne 2005, p. 352 f
evn sammlung. Ankäufe 1997 – 1999, Maria Enzersdorf 1999, p. 41
Context
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from 1994
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letters