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Props & Prosthesis

Reverberations of the Body in Contemporary Austrian Art

Ljubljana, Jelovškova kapela in Grad Kodeljevo, October 2006

Curator: Walter Seidl
Authors: Gyula Fodor, Sabine Bitter/Helmut Weber, Markus Schinwald, Ursula Mayer, Sonja Gangl and Iris Klein.

Props & Prosthesis deals with the changing dynamic with which issues of the body, its status as a cultural signifier, and its representation as an uncanny object/subject have recently been perceived in contemporary visual arts. Focusing on the medium of photography, the exhibition questions the technical and ontological moments of this medium, whose visual output constantly oscillates between reality and fiction, between what is culturally significant, concealed or unmasked. Walter Seidl




Public Opening: 19. October 2006

www.artreflect.org

Issues of the self and its gradual replacement through various objects, props and prostheses as well as moments of disappearing or publicly shining bodies have permeated photographic art since the 1980s and culminated in the work of Cindy Sherman. With the theoretic support of theorists like Judith Butler or Slavoj Žižek, the physical body has been unmasked as a cultural construct, whose sexual identity is merely one component of the overall functioning of the subject within society.

 

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