Christian Hutzinger: still

Christian Hutzinger: still
Hrsg. Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
Schlebrügge Editor, 2004
ISBN-13: 978-3851600414
€ 22.– (excl. shipping)

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Austrian artist Christian Hutzinger presents paintings, collage, and a mural work that in their playful, ornamental forms treat questions of the personal identity and its reflection in society. In their engagement with the exhibition space, Hutzinger’s works also challenge the standard museum practice of art presentation.

Christian Hutzinger, who was born in 1966 in Vienna, does not only use rooms to display his pictures, he also interprets them politically by creating mural paintings. By thus linking pictures and spaces he shows that exhibition rooms are always an integral part of the process of staging art.
The artist has preserved the closed shape of the MUMOK Factory, making the room appear like a box in which the pictures on display offer their potential for creative interpretations. This stresses the workshop-like character of the MUMOK Factory, a venue for presenting young art.

The way Hutzinger addresses spatial architecture suggests his sensitivity towards questions relating to one’s own identity and its social acceptance. For the painter memories of his own childhood, its imagery and games are recurrent topics that also provide contemporary and social references. Creative elements may playfully merge with individualism in his works, while shapes reminiscent of silhouettes and templates suggest social patterns and standards. Both elements are blended in Hutzinger’s art, implying just how manifold the relations between individuals and social groupings actually are.

Just like the exhibition space, the cell-like motifs painted by Hutzinger on walls and pictures serve as receptacles for projections. These shapes may be regarded as vessels to be filled conceptually; while toying with the power of recollection they are also like games. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle they seem to tumble across pictures or walls, demonstrating an ephemerality which may be lost at any time but may just as easily be regained.

Hutzinger’s allusions to the playful, ornamental, and childlike are not redolent of nostalgia or the naïve belief in being able to make all one’s dreams come true. Rather, they disclose an utter sense of reality, and this matter-of-factness tags poignantly poetic imagery onto memories instead of inconsiderately suppressing the past.

Editor: Rainer Fuchs
Text: Roland Wäspe, Judith Fische
German/English
120 pages with 96 B/W and coloured Illustrations, softcover