Description
(Text)
US artist Boris Lurie bequeathed the world a radical oeuvre that attacked the bourgeois concept of art with images and words. Lurie unmistakably rejected all idealistic expectations of art, all types of aestheticism, and likewise the capitalist art market.
Back in the late 1950s he turned his back on painting and adopted collaging instead. His preferred material: Pin-ups that he made into consumable objects. The most shocking art products of his efforts were the collages in which pornographic photos were juxtaposed to images of Nazi concentration camps. These bore testimony to the artist's experience of the linkage of domination, repression, and sexual degradation.
The exhibition at Neues Museum approaches Boris Lurie the man through his art. Works by other artists (and they include people with whom Lurie was never in contact) shed light on his approach. Contextualized in this way, Lurie's oeuvre emerges as a psychogram of his day, an undertaking that called for people to protest and object to the injustices of society.
(Author portrait)
Peter Weibel. Geboren 1944 in Odessa. Studierte Literatur, Film, Mathematik, Medizin und Philosophie in Wien und Paris. 1981-84 Gastprofessur für Gestaltungslehre und bildnerische Erziehung an der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien. 1981 Gastprofessur am College of Art and Design in Halifax, Kanada. 1982-85 Professor für Fotografie an der Gesamthochschule Kassel. 1984-89 Associate Professor for Video and Digital Arts, Center for Media Study, State University of New York at Buffalo, N.Y. 1989-94 Direktor des Instituts für Neue Medien an der Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main. Seit 1984 Professor für visuelle Mediengestaltung an der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien. 1986-95 künstlerischer Berater und Leiter der Ars Electronica in Linz. 1993-99 Österreich-Kommissär der Biennale von Venedig. 1993-99 künstlerischer Leiter der Neuen Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz. Seit 1999 Vorstand des Zentrums für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe. Peter Weibel ist sowohl als Kurator nationaler und internationaler Ausstellungen wie auch als Autor zahlreicher herausragender Publikationen eine anerkannte Kapazität.
