Portrait Fiona Liewehr / Photo: Oliver Jiszda, courtesy Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna

Tom Felber for creative face Magazine

The distance between Berlin and Vienna is nearly 800 km - but in terms of fine art often both cities are very close. The exhibition [scene missing], a co-operation of Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin and Georg Kargl Fine Arts in Vienna, is showcased in Berlin at Gallery Thomas Schulte from March 22 until April 26, 2008. It was presented in Vienna earlier this year.

The exhibition [scene missing] presents eleven artists, namely Manon de Boer, Cerith Wyn Evans, Andreas Fogarasi, Björn Kämmerer, Theo Ligthart, Ján Mančuška, Christian Mayer, Wolfgang Plöger, Nadim Vardag, Marijke van Warmerdam und Christoph Weber, that engage with cinema and film.

Fiona Liewehr, the curator of both exhibitions: „ Without showing film in the usual sense or simulating cinematic situations, the works presented here all interrogate methods of narrative construction and point out the fragmentary character of reality and its filmic representation. The absence of cinema and film at the exhibition [scene missing] is a product of our collective film memory. The receiver completes "the scene missing" by taking recourse to his or her own memories of cinema and film history. In the field of tension between the black box and the white cube, the cinema becomes a material in the works exhibited.

In contrast to avant-garde film and the expanded cinema, the motivation behind this artistic practice is not breaking with standard conventions, but rather the appropriation of such conventions. The conventions of filmic representation provide a starting point. Narrative structures, an interest in the mechanics of the projection apparatus, cinematographic traditions and the reception of film are all subjected to deconstruction and recoding. Film history becomes raw material." For artist's profiles see www.georgkargl.com. (tf)

More details on the exhibition at www.galeriethomasschulte.de

Galerie Thomas Schulte: Installation view Manglano-Ovalle-Khan / courtesy Galerie Thomas Schulte

Galerie Thomas Schulte - until 2000 Galerie Franck + Schulte - was one of the first galleries to open in Berlin after reunification. The gallery's very first exhibition with Rebecca Horn's "Chor der Heuschrecken" in April 1991 already received a good deal of attention among both the critics and the general public. The gallery quickly advanced to become one of the leading international locations for contemporary art in Germany, showing positions never before on view in Berlin, including artists such as Richard Artschwager, Alighiero Boetti, Magdalena Jetelová, Sol LeWitt, Allan McCollum, Pat Steir, and Robert Mapplethorpe. more

In June 1998 the Georg Kargl Fine Arts Gallery with an exhibition space of more than 350m2 on 3 levels was opened in Schleifmühlgasse, which has recently developed into one of Vienna's most renowned gallery districts. Since then Georg Kargl has not only focused on continuous exhibition activities but also on positioning and placing contemporary artists, whose significance is reflected in present-day international discourse. more