Austrian Pavilion
55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Mathias Poledna
Mathias Poledna represents Austria at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
29th May 2013
For his exhibition in the Austrian Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition, La
Biennale di Venezia, artist Mathias Poledna presents a new work titled Imitation of Life.
A 35mm color film roughly three minutes in length, Imitation of Life was produced
using the historic, labor-intensive technique of handmade animation and is built
around a cartoon character performing a musical number. Its buoyant spirit and
visual texture evoke the Golden Era of the American animation industry during the
late 1930s and early 1940s. In the preceding years, the time of the Great Depression,
the medium had evolved from a crude form of mass spectacle into a visual language
of enormous richness and complexity that shaped and continues to resonate in our
collective imaginary.
Imitation of Life appropriates and reassembles this language as it revisits the contradictions and ambiguities that accompanied the medium’s development. Advanced
methods of production and visual ingenuity – indebted to the syntax of European
modernism in its handling of surface, depth and color, and lauded by the avantgarde
and critic intelligence of the time – coexisted with sentimental characterization and
storytelling based on age-old fables and fairy tales.
Among the most pronounced features of the film is the extreme contrast between
the conciseness of its scene, and the extraordinary amount of labor that went into its
creation: more than 5,000 handmade sketches, layouts, animation drawings, watercolored backgrounds and ink-rendered animation cells, produced in close cooperation
with acclaimed artists from the animation departments of film studios in Los Angeles,
most notably Disney. Several small groups of these drawings are presented in the
Austrian Pavilion.
The soundtrack, another key element of the production, was recorded with a full
orchestra in the style of the period at the Warner Brothers scoring stage in Los Angeles.
It combines new original music created specifically for this project with a re-arrangement of a popular song from the 1930s written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown.
Presented in Venice, Poledna‘s installation allows for a complex cross-reading with
other episodes from this period: the relationship between European art and American
mass culture; European emigration to the United States and American export to
Europe; the presentation of animated films produced by the Disney Studios at the
first film festivals in Venice; the late modernism of the Austrian Pavilion, and the
period from 1938 to 1942 during which the building remained empty while Austrian
artists exhibited in the German Pavilion.
Beyond its engagement with animation, Imitation of Life incorporates into its fleeting
narrative a number of other elements from the early history of entertainment, such as
Vaudeville, silent comedy and film musicals, and form diverse artistic forms including
film, music, painting and literature. But even while it subscribes to the synergistic
logic of its medium, the film deliberately eschews a seamless whole, remaining at
once alien and utterly recognizable.
The film is presented in a temporary extension to the Austrian Pavilion designed by
architects Kuehn Malvezzi.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue in English and German
designed by Mathias Poledna and Martha Stutteregger, and published by Distanz Verlag.
Commissioner Jasper Sharp: “Imitation of Life is a work of bewildering imagination
and complexity. It weaves into its short narrative a multitude of convergent histories:
of the avant-garde and popular culture, politics and propaganda, capitalism and
collapse, and an artistic medium that has been part of our collective consciousness for
almost a century. It finds an appropriate home at the Venice Biennale, a stage on
which these histories have themselves played out. I applaud Mathias Poledna for his
vision, courage and commitment to bring it to life, and for the extraordinary achievement that this film represents.”
We are delighted to announce that the first edition of the film Imitation of Life, together
with a group of production drawings, has been acquired by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art
Contemporary. Founded in 2002 by Francesca Habsburg in Vienna, TBA21 is committed
to supporting the production of contemporary art and is actively engaged in commissioning and disseminating unconventional projects that defy traditional disciplinary
categorizations.
Francesca Habsburg, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary: “Mathias Poledna’s
film, Imitation of Life—produced with artists from the animation departments of film
studios in Los Angeles, where many Central European émigrés came to work in the
1940s—transcends all artistic boundaries. Over the past year I have spent quite some
time in LA. Despite the tragic events of WWII, it was a place where creativity flourished,
so it means a tremendous amount to me to once again link Vienna to LA through this
interdisciplinary collaboration. It is a pleasure for TBA21 to support this project and
acquire this extraordinary work for the collection.”
Press contact
Klara M. Piza,
press@labiennalevenezia.at or +43 699 10 83 74 00
Installation images and the full press pack can be downloaded under
www.labiennalevenezia.at/en/press
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Mathias Poledna
Artist
Mathias Poledna (born 1965 in Vienna, Austria) completed his studies at the University
of Applied Arts and the University of Vienna. He has lived and worked in Los Angeles
since 2000.
His work examines the interconnections between art and entertainment, modernity
in architecture and design, the language of film, cinema and the process of imagemaking in our culture. Often informed by extensive research, his projects of recent
years have taken the form of minimal and highly evocative film installations that
suggest a complex tension between their visceral attraction and concepts circulating
around them.
Poledna’s work is represented in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA),
New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; New Museum, New York;
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA),
Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museu
d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA); MUMOK, Vienna; and the Generali
Foundation, Vienna.
Solo exhibitions include: Secession, Vienna (2013); Galerie Buchholz, Berlin (2012);
Raven Row, London (with Florian Pumhösl, 2011); Portikus, Frankfurt am Main (2010);
Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna (2010); New Museum, New York (2009); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (with Christopher Williams, 2009); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2007);
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2006); Richard Telles Fine Art,
Los Angeles (2005); MUMOK, Vienna (2003); and Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2001).
Recent group exhibitions include: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Haus
der Kunst, Munich; Frankfurter Kunstverein; Warsaw Museum of Modern Art; Musée
Rodin, Paris; Secession, Vienna. Poledna also participated in the Busan Biennial (2012);
the Yokohama Triennial (2008); the Whitney Biennial, New York (2006); the Liverpool
Biennial, Tate Liverpool (2004); the 3. Berlin Biennale (2004), and Manifesta 1, Rotterdam (1996).
Mathias Poledna is represented by Galerie Buchholz, Berlin?/?Köln, Galerie Meyer
Kainer, Vienna, as well as Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles.austria 7
Jasper sharp
Commissioner
Jasper Sharp (born 1975 in Hampshire, England) is an art historian and curator. He
completed his undergraduate studies in Edinburgh and London, and has lived in
Vienna since 2006, where he is the Adjunct Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art
at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Between 1999 and 2005 he worked at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice,
where he was responsible for the museum‘s special exhibitions programme and
permanent collection displays, and the production of large-scale contemporary art
projects both at the museum and at the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
He also conducted extensive research into the formation of Peggy Guggenheim’s
collection and the history of her New York museumgallery Art of This Century.
He has lived in Vienna since 2006, working initially as a curator at Thyssen-Bornemisza
Art Contemporary, and then as an independent curator and writer. Since January 2011
he has held the position of Adjunct Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art at the
Kunsthistorisches Museum, for whom he has developed exhibition projects with artists
including Ed Ruscha, Lucian Freud, Richard Wright and Joseph Cornell.
Sharp is an advisor to the Outset Contemporary Art Fund, curator of the talks programme at Frieze Masters, London, and a member of the advisory board of the
Sammlung Lenikus which provides studio residencies in Vienna for Austrian and
international artists.
