TATIANA LECOMTE Anschluss 19 October 2018 until 6 January 2019 Chandelier from Hitler's room at the Hotel Weinzinger, Linz, 1938, NORDICO Stadtmuseum Linz, photographer unknown
TATIANA LECOMTE Anschluss 19 October 2018 until 6 January 2019 The exhibition at the LENTOS is concerned with the media s take on historical events related to 1938, a year that was to have grave consequences. For this exhibition, the artist combines her film Ein mörderischer Lärm [A murderous noise] with photo material, partly her own and partly historical. did a great deal of research in Linz s photographic archives. The interest that informs Lecomte s artistic work is firmly on analogue pictorial material of the kind normally used to Keep collective memories alive. She approaches the archival material with the intention to question traditional received wisdom. For the exhibition, both Lecomte s own photo material and selected historical images have been arranged on twenty-nine boards. The pictorial material has been reproduced photographically in black and white while retaining the original dimensions. The captions are reprinted on their own boards and are presented separately at the exhibition. Images and their captions must each be perceived on their own. In one room, visitors can read what the pictorial material is all about; in another, the pictorial material is put on display without any references to the context of its genesis. In Lecomte s 2015 experimental film Ein mörderischer Lärm [A murderous noise] contemporary witness Jean-Jacques Boijentin talks about the labour he was forced to perform at the Gusen concentration camp. In the film, the silence pervading today s publicly accessible tunnel is contrasted with the omnipresent, almost unbearable noise contemporary witnesses mention in their reports. sets off in search of this noise. Boijentin meets up with the foley artist Julien Baissat. Twenty-nine display boards Focusing on 1938, the year of Austria s Anschluss with the German Reich, did research in several archives in Linz, looking for original photos. In one of these archives she found photos of the Aphrodite Temple on Linz s Bauernberg. Lecomte contrasts these with the non-photoshopped picture of an aging woman. Another board juxtaposes a photo of the fire of the Linz synagogue on November 10, 1938 and Herbert Bayer s Aspen Trees Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit [Aspen Trees In Search of Lost Time]. Another board documents the pomposity and splendour of Hitler s room in Hotel Weinzinger, as it was called at the time. The Führer stayed there when he announced Austria s Anschluss with the German Reich in Linz. This is contrasted with the reproduction of a drawing by a concentration camp inmate that conveys at least a vague impression of the conditions under which inmates were forced to live in the Mauthausen concentration camp. A photo of the Mauthausen Stairs of Death is displayed underneath another photo depicting Nazi propaganda in the stairwell of a house in Linz s old city centre. Of the historical photo portraits of inmates in Mauthausen concentration camp Lecomte only shows the back, withholding the faces from the voyeuristic gaze. The artist approaches the political events of the year 1938 from a multiplicity of perspectives. Her research included other locations in addition to Upper Austria. Some photos were shot at the former concentration camp Natzweiler- 2
, Am Struthof, 2005, Bildrecht, Wien 2018 Struthof in Alsace and in the former internment camp in Gurs. In May 1940, internees in this camp in the southwest of France included Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt. Lecomte employs a variety of stylistic devices to defamiliarize these images with a view to activating collective memory. She combines her photos with the work of others to create her display boards. This montage technique allows her to foreground hidden connections and to call the pictorial aesthetic of contemporary photographs tainted with National Socialist ideology into question. The exhibition creates new contexts of meaning and puts question marks against traditional modes in the visual representation of topics in the field of contemporary history. It encourages visitors to reconsider the claim to infallibility advanced by history and historiography and to unmask it as an ideological construct. draws attention to an additional approach to the crucial topics of contemporary history. Ein mörderischer Lärm [A murderous noise], 2015 Short, duration: 21 minutes, French with German subtitles On the morning of January 16, 1944, the Gestapo arrested 36 people in Mussidan, a small village in the southwest of France. They were suspected of having helped the résistance. Jean-Jacques Boijentin and his father Maurice were among them. Both were deported, first to Buchenwald and Mauthausen, then to Gusen I, one of the satellite camps of Mauthausen near St. Georgen an der Gusen in Upper Austria. Jean-Jacques Boijentin ended up in the Gusen II concentration camp, where he was made to perform forced labour as an electrician in the construction of the subterranean plane factory B8 Bergkristall. Today hardly a sound can be heard in the tunnel at Gusen/St. Georgen. We know, however, that at the time of the tunnel s use as an underground plane factory it was flooded by hellish, deafening noise. In an effort to counteract the eery quiet of the empty tunnel, sets off in her film in search of noise. http://tatianalecomte.com/ein-morderischer-larm/ Publication In the exhibition, all the photos on display are black and white. Lecomte s withdrawal of colour from the photos is a reference to the way historical events are typically portrayed in the media. The absence of colour can also be read as a metaphor for the impossibility of adequately rendering all the different facets inherent to events of contemporary history. The book that will be published at the end of the exhibition will restore colour to the pictures for the first time. This publication will be launched on January 6, 2019 in a matinee at the LENTOS Kunstmuseum. http://tatianalecomte.com/ein-morderischer-larm/ 3
CV was born in Bordeaux in 1971. She lives and works in Vienna. The artist attended the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Lyon in 1991-92 and Meisterschule für Kunst und Gestaltung in painting in Graz between 1993 and 1995. Between 1995 and 2002 she studied at the Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna and between 1998 and 2000 at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. In 2015 Lecomte was awarded the European Month of Photography Arendt Award / Siegerprojekt, BIG ART-Wettbewerb Kurzfilm Gusen. Solo exhibitions 2018 Anna Artaker,, Josephinum, Vienna 2017 Nach einer wahren Begebenheit, Galerie Marenzi, Leibnitz 2013 Tselem ve-tsilum, Museum am Judenplatz, Jüdisches Museum Vienna Meine erste Löwin, Neue Galerie, Tiroler Künstlerschaft, Innsbruck 2011 Šejla Kamerić,, Camera Austria, Graz 2009 Scriptures Without, Words, Galerie Stadtpark, Krems Group exhibitions 2018 Löcher in der Wand, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna 2017 Naturgeschichten, mumok, Vienna 2015 What Was Documentary Is Now Something Else, Fotograf Gallery, Prague Memory Lab. Photography challenges History, MUDAM, Luxemburg Disputed Landscape Uncovering History, Camera Austria, Graz 2014 Memory Lab. Photography challenges History, MUSA Vienna Archives, Re-Assemblances and Surveys, Klovičevi dvori Gallery, Zagreb Punctum, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg 2013 Hohe Dosis, Fotohof, Salzburg DLF 1874. Die Biografie der Bilder, Audain Gallery, Vancouver www.tatianalecomte.com 4
PROGRAM EVENTS Matinee and book presentation 6 January 2019, 11 am Presentation of the publication of the exhibition with colored illustrations. Free admission, German only PUBLIC GUIDED TOUR tour through the exhibition duration 1 hour, costs 3, exclusive admission, German only Every Thursday, 7 pm (except 8 and 15 November) Combined Tour through The Collection and, German only Talk with the Artist Thursday, 15 November, 7 pm with and Curator Brigitte Reutner, German only REGISTRATION Teleservice Center of the City of Linz +43 732/7070 or info@mag.linz.at 5
PRESS IMAGES Press Images are available for download at www.lentos.at/presse Free use of press images only in conjunction with the relevant exhibition. Chandelier from Hitler's room at the Hotel Weinzinger, Linz, 1938, NORDICO Stadtmuseum Linz, photographer unknown At Struthof, 2005 Best viewed from the air 2, 2008 Base Jumpers Crag 1, 2005 Burning synagogue, November 10, 1938 photo: Franz Mittermayr, Diözesanarchiv Linz Base Jumpers Crag 5, 2005 6
Small Island of Reprisals, 2006 Execution sites, 2005 A Hellish Noise (movie still),2015 A Hellish Noise (movie still),2015 in the LENTOS exhibtions Exhbition view Exhbition view 7
Exhbition view Exhbition view 8
FACTSHEET Exhibition title TATIANA LECOMTE Anschluss Exhibition period 19 October 2018 until 6 January 2019 Opening Press conference Exhibition venue Curator Exhibits Thursday, 18 October, 7 pm Thursday, 18 October, 10 am Lower Floor Brigitte Reutner The exhibition includes the film A Hellish Noise [Ein mörderischer Lärm], 29 black-and-white picture panels, and 29 text panels. Opening hours Tue Sun 10 am to 6 pm, Thur 10 am to 9 pm, Mon closed For any change in opening times, and special opening hours please check our webseite at www.lentos.at. Admission 8, concesssions 6 / 4,50 Press contact Clarissa Ujvari Tel. +43(0)732/7070-3603 clarissa.ujvari@lentos.at Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1 4020 Linz Web & Social Media lentos.at facebook.com/lentoslinz twitter.com/lentoslinz instagram.com/lentoslinz 9