Christoph Meier

Opening, 15 April 2008, 7 pm
Christoph Meier
in conversation with Peter Pakesch , director Landesmuseum Joanneum Graz

Meier’s studio-based approach to making art is representative of his inquisitive mind. Large free-standing sculptures, minimal in-situ interventions, video installations and screen prints interrogate the theoretical grounding, reception and boundaries of artistic production. He employs "objets trouvés" bearing signs of pre-existing activities to playfully reassemble them in an attempt to experiment with error and self-doubt. Using a rigorous formalist vocabulary that may appear to pay homage to modernist abstract principles, Meier’s practice doesn’t follow any conventional scheme. Work rules and quick design solutions derive from the architectural field that, together with bricolage techniques, elucidate a peculiar approach to formal sculptural concerns.
His over-elaborated or simplified works can look like pieces of furniture or Duchampian readymades but they distance themselves from discourses around materiality, or "high" and "low art", to focus on his fascination with the studio as the main context of production, reflection and perception of art. If we follow Vilém Flusser’s theory that "design" is an activity occurring in contexts associated with deceit, in this exhibition Meier defies the (mis-)use of ornamental classical design conceited in the neorenaissance style of the Academy building designed by Theophil Hansen in the 1870s. The Danish architect’s decorative masquerade inspires him to symbolically rearrange these mannered motifs in a mini "(Semper) depot" echoing the warehouse built in the same years by Gottfried Semper and Karl Hasenauer, now also housing studios of the Academy. (DB)

Biography Christoph Meier
Born in 1980 in Vienna, Austria, lives and works in Vienna.
Studied architecture from 1999–2005 at the Technical University Vienna, since 2003 he is enrolled in the Fine Arts study program at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (professor Heimo Zobernig), 2008 Glasgow School of Art. 2002 founding of Die Halle (Consortium), Vienna.
Exhibitions (selection): 2008 Nosbaum & Reding Art Contemporain , Luxembourg | 2007  Work in Progress, Forum+, Groeningen Museum, Bruges, Belgium; acapulco, Düsseldorf, Germany; Viewing Club 10, London, England; New Prints 2007/Spring – IPCNY, New York, USA | 2006  Titel in Arbeit, Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria; Zur Zeit II, Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn & Taxis, Bregenz, Austria; CMYK, Viennabiennale06, bell street project space, Vienna, Austria; Crosskick I, Kunstverein Braunschweig , Braunschweig, Germany; UDAR-P, Kunsthalle Exnergasse , Vienna, Austria | 2005  A good job is hard to find, Bétonsalon Museumsquartier, Vienna, Austria; Desaster in X., Die Halle, Vienna, Austria