Urs August Steiner July 2016
Urs August Steiner integrates elements from the digital world, film, television, and futurology into one frame of reference. He views an exhibit not as a collection of objects, but rather as a space in which a series of events unfold, similar to a dramatic production. He isolates individual images, sounds, or scientific facts in order to recontextualize them into new forms, materials and configurations. The central themes he addresses with this process are the relationships between image and sound, between time and space. Steiner works with different media and materials whether they be pictures, installations or sculptures. Ausbildung 2009-2011 Master in Fine Arts, ECAL University of Art and Design Lausanne 2007 Fine Arts, CCA California College of the Arts, San Francisco 2005-2008 Bachelor Scenography, ZHdK Zurich University of the Arts, Zürich Solo exhibitions 2016 Fokus Prize, Kunsthaus Glarus 2015 Buster Six, Des Pacio, San José, Costa Rica, CRI Orbit 2046, MoCA Pavilion, Museum for Contemporary Art,, Shanghai, CHN 2014 Twin Peaks, Grand Palais, Bern Buster II, Lokal-int, Biel 2012 Some Scream and Some Don t, Splatterpool, New York, USA Back From a Holiday, Die Diele, Zürich 2010 Bull s Eye, Galerie Kiss the Design, Lausanne Group exhibitions (selcection) 2015 New Glarus, Kunsthaus Glarus F?!, Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, USA Artisttalks 2015 That s not fake, Le Salon dans le Salon, Moderator Dr. Iemmolo, Zürich A Wrinkle in Time and Space, MoCA Pavilion Shanghai, Julie Chun, Shanghai, CHN Awards / Residencies 2016 Bursary Award, Canton St. Gallen 2015 Pro Helvetia, artist residency, Shanghai, CHN Pro Helvetia, financial support, Buster Six, Des Pacio, Costa Rica, CRI 2014 Fokus-Preis, Kunsthaus Glarus 2012 Residency Unlimited, New York, USA 2014 Kunstschaffen Glarus und Linthgebiet, Kunsthaus Glarus Catch of the Year, Dienstgebäude, Zürich The Rest is Noise, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur 2013 Ausstellung I, Supersol, Zürich 2012 Kolorit, Wäscherei Kunstverein Zürich, Zürich 2011 Vitrine Nr. 01 Editionen, Die Diele, Zürich Any Two, Festival of Ideas, New Museums, New York, USA Tree Structure, Collective Show, Los Angeles, USA 2010 ECAL, La Dépendance, Lausanne 2009 European Art Ensemble, Galerie 1m3, Lausanne 2008 Shift in Progress, Shift/New Media Festival, Basel
Happy Landing Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus, 2015 this and next page exhibition detail arylic paint, fuses 1008 cm x 315 cm Acrystal, chlorella vulgaris, styrofoam, chain 120 cm x 60 cm x 40 cm The installation Happy Landing in Kunsthaus Glarus consists of a wall object and a hanging sculpture on a metal chain. The sculpture resembles a meteorite and has a green surface with a grainy structure. The color was made by mixing Acrystal, a type of fastdrying plaster, with Chlorella, an algae powder. The algae is one of 137 microorganisms whose color value is searched for in space by scientists, in the hope of finding potential life on other planets. The wall art deals with a continuation in the Buster series, named for the comic and film director Buster Keaton. Its inspiration came from a scene from the slapstick comedy Cops (1922). In this scene, Buster lights a cigarette from the burning fuse of a bomb. In the film, the lit fuse is structured in a chronological sequence. As soon as a bomb fuse is lit, a foreseeable time period is defined, in which tension increases palpably as the awaited explosion approaches. In the Buster series I have translated this tension into a spatial model, with zigzag lines and circles. In combination with the marks of the burning fuse, I incorporated a digital glitch into the work.
Buster Six Des Pacio, San José, Costa Rica, 2015 this and next page exhibition detail arylic paint, fuses variable size The solo exhibit at the Des Pacio art space employs two identical rooms. In the first room, part of the floor and walls have been painted yellow and white, and two corners have been burned with a lit fuse. In the second room, the visitor uses a ladder to catch a glimpse of a computerized choreography of light. In Room 1, the fuse gives a sense of presentment, whereas in Room 2, time is made tangible through the rhythms of the computer-controlled light.
Buster Six Des Pacio, San José, Costa Rica, 2015 exhibition detail moving lights variable size
Buster V Fondazione Fiasco, Zurich, 2015 this and next page fuse on glas, resin 42 cm x 59.4 cm fuse on foil 800 cm x 100cm
Buster II Lokal-int, Biel, 2014 ceiling painting fuse, 750 cm x 250 cm
You Talkin To Me? / 01:04:04 Kunsthaus Glarus, 2014 Fokus Artprize Silk screen on glass Framed 140 cm x 100 cm
The Rest is Noise Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, 2014 audio piece, loop, 02:05:28 All dialogs, as well as film music, were completely removed from the sound of the films by the director Stanley Kubrick and lined up to a soundscape. The tone of the following films was used: Lolita, 1962 / Dr. Seltsam, oder wie ich lernte, die Bombe zu lieben, 1964 / 2001: Odyssee im Weltraum, 1968 / Uhrwerk Orange, 1971 / Barry Lyndon, 1975 / Shining, 1980 / Full Metal Jacket, 1987 / Eyes Wide Shut, 1999
Some Scream and Some Don t Splatterpool, New York, 2012 image 1, installation detail plasterwall, wallpaper, film still, The Shining, Stanley Kubrick 450cm x 220cm laser engraving on acrylic glass AAAAARGH!!! 2 x 60 cm x 60 cm image 2, installation detail plasterwall, wallpaper, 450 cm x 220 cm acrylic glass, 60 cm x 60 cm wood, 250 cm x 110 cm x 30 cm plaster, 250 cm x 110 cm x 30 cm Atari, music video synthesizer projection, 400 cm x 300 cm The basis for the exhibit in Splatterpool, in New York, is a scene from Stanley Kubrick s 1980 film The Shining. In this scene, Jack breaks down the door to the bathroom, into which his wife Wendy has fled screaming, with an ax. Wendy s screams have been isolated and translated into a visual form, resembling an abstract diamond, by an audiovisual machine from Atari (Model C240, 1976). This provides the cornerstone for an installation in the outer area of the gallery, as well as a sculpture. Upon entering the gallery, the visitor feels pulled to a wall with an 8m x 3m pixelated still image from the film. On the right are two wall art works. These are made of shiny black acrylic, with the word Screaaaaaaaam engraved onto their surfaces. The Atari audiovisual machine, a projection of the scream, and a sculpture together with its cast form are found within the exhibit room. Upon exiting the gallery, visitors were instructed to go into the rear courtyard one by one, where they would find in the ground a hole, in the form of the sculpture. The invitation to go into the courtyard alone meant that the visitors could not immediately exchange impressions with each other. A situation was thereby created similar to that which one experiences in a cinema, where communication about the experience must be saved for later.
Die Frucht war vor der Farbe, 2012 Installation 84 Orangenabgüsse, 7 Platten, je 90 x 60 cm farbiges Plexiglas Some Scream and Some Don t Splatterpool, New York, 2012 installation detail 250 cm x 110 cm x 30 cm
Twin Peaks Grand Palais, Bern, 2014 this and next page sculpture wood, variable sizes artisan glass framed with laser engraving 60 cm x 60 cm The American television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost between 1990 and 1991, constitutes the starting point for the exhibition in Grand Palais Bern. The principle of doubling, which runs as a common thread throughout the whole film equipment and architecture, is dealt with in this work by using sculptures and stained glass panels. I first isolated the black-and-white zigzag floor pattern from the Red Room and transformed it into a sculpture. This abstract representation is carried out in the stained glass panels, on which the twin mountains, symbolizing the fictional town of Twin Peaks, are engraved in an abstract form.
Orbit 2046 / Together we will travel to the future MoCA Pavilion, Museum for Contemporary Art Shanghai, 2015 this page exhibition detail variable size video, loop, 4 29 next page set photo Orbit 2046 is an art project in virtual reality. The web address www.orbit2046.com is to be kept online for 31 years, and will be deleted on January 1st, 2046. All changes made to the website will be made public in a logbook. The site contains a video, in which a male voice explains the project, while I act as protagonist. I wear a black suit and stand at the end of a table which holds a roulette wheel without numbers. In a long camera pan, the camera approaches me and stops, and I throw a ball into the roulette wheel, which turns endlessly and never comes to a stop. The title Orbit 2046 comes from the 2004 film 2046 by Wong Kar-Wai. In this film, the earth in the year 2046 is encompassed by an endless rail network, on which a train races aimlessly through time. The project is in collaboration with Pro Helvetia Shangai and the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art.
Dinner in 2046 Commonwealth and Council Los Angeles, 2015 Performance 4h The performance Dinner in 2046 is a continuation of the Orbit 2046 project. During the exhibit, you can invite someone to a dinner date in the year 2046. Time and place of the dinner is up you. The commitment is obtained in writing, and signed by the inviter, the invitee and by me.
Ausstellungstexte In Orbit 2046, Steiner reverses Meier s vow, translating it to this virtual world. The central element in this project is a website (http://www. orbit2046.com) that hosts a video. The video depicts an endlessly spinning roulette wheel void of markings, quietly overseen by a croupier. On January 1st, 2046, the website will be deleted. In the intervening years, a logbook will document every change made to the interface. Buster Six Des Pacio, San José, Costa Rica, 2015 Buster Six begins as a whimsical reference to Buster Keaton s slapstick comedy, Buster and the Police. As is typical of Urs August Steiner s practice, the idea of found footage remains the conceptual underpinning that drives the work. Re-contextualizing elements from film, which can include individual scenes, frames, audio tracks, or aspects of set design and art direction through a process of fragmentation, he looks to interrogate image and sound, time and space, as agents in the cinematic experience. In this instance, Steiner looks to a moment in the film when Buster lights a cigarette on the burning wick of a bomb. Unlike this tropic scene -- built on an intuitive knowledge of chronology, prefixed on anticipation -- the artist reframes the possibilities offered by such an suspenseful event. Rather than allowing a sequence to unfold as per our expectation, Steiner provides an immersive scene for the viewer in which time is suspended. The installation occupies two spaces of the same size within Des Pacio: the first, painted in yellow, has a geometric form burned through with fuses; the second -- accessed by a ladder -- glitters with hundreds of fairy lights. The viewer s experience is framed by the juxtaposition of walking through a fixed space that as already been acted upon (the burnt fuse) and peering through to another that is in perennial motion (dancing lights). Temporality is undone; time is turned onto itself. It is this elusive, ethereal space between what has already happened and what might yet take place -- this momentary suspension -- that Buster Six sets out to establish. Curater, Federico Herrero Orbit 2046 MoCA Pavilion, Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst Shanghai, 2015 As is characteristic of Urs August Steiner s work, Orbit 2046 makes reference to the fantasies of cinema. Taking inspiration from Wong Kar-wai s 2004 film, 2046, in which a train hurtles inexhaustibly through time, the work explores the postmodern complexities in establishing a grounded reality. Steiner s interest in film manifests itself in his dismantling of tropes and turning points in movies. Re-contextualizing important events, symbols, or scenes through a process of fragmentation, he looks to interrogate image and sound, time and space, as agents in the cinematic experience. In 1994, Swiss conceptual artist Dieter Meier returned to a plaque he had installed in Kassel during Documenta 5 (1972). The plaque had the prophetic inscription: On 23rd March 1994, from 3 to 4pm, Dieter Meier will stand on this plaque. It was a bold promise that flirted with the follies of chance and fate. Our ideas of presence -- or of being in a fixed place -- have now been reconfigured by the spaces offered by the internet: an expansive secondary universe that exists between infinite servers and networks. We are everywhere at once, dispersed across an infinite cybernetic realm that has defied our understanding of time. Whereas Meier anticipates an embodied moment after a prolonged absence, Steiner maintains an omnipresence before eventual erasure. The roulette wheel represents the mechanisms of probability: like the ball jettisoning off the wheel repeatedly, we wait for the outcome of our own orbital path. Art Historian, Sayantan Mukhopadhyay
You Talkin To Me? / 01:04:04 Kunsthaus Glarus, 2014 In a scene in the Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver (1976), Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle stands in front of a mirror in his small, shabby apartment and plays himself getting provoked by his own reflection while holding a gun: You talkin to me? You talkin to me? Well I m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you re talking to? The scene has achieved cult status and has been adapted, spoofed and artistically treated numerous times - in films such as La Haîne (1995), in TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons, but also in Douglas Gordon s installation through a looking glass (1999). Using this scene as found object for his work You Talkin To Me? / 01:04:04, Urs August Steiner not only examines the dense network of references in popular culture that comes together in this film fragment; at the same time, he initiates a reflection of the medial conditions of sound and/as image. You talkin to me? : The sentence, which De Niro utters several consecutive times in Taxi Driver and acts out bodily - and thus visibly - through his nervous play, is isolated by Steiner in his work and turned into an acoustic building block. Using the program Photosounder, this was converted into a spectrograph - an image representing the temporal progression of the sound in its frequencies. With further image processing, this sound image was stretched, abstracted, and screen printed onto a glass plate. By way of these processes of abstraction and translation, the acoustic event You talkin to me? creates an image that can still be read as an encoding of the audio signal. Just like a music score it inspires to inwardly voice out the You talkin to me? and to assign it to the individual image phases; at the same time, the code with its sensual and material properties is brought out. The dark, paranoid atmosphere of Scorsese s film thus is dissolved into geometrically abstract patterns and shades of black that still contain traces of the scene, but mostly evoke it in an implied fashion. The translucent quality of the glass surface emphasizes the transparency of the audio image and allows the viewer to see the wall behind it, on which the the beam patterns are multiplied in the shadows. In a very sensual-material sense, the glass also incorporates the mirror in which Travis sees and provokes himself. Depending on how the viewer stands in front of the work, the reflection on the glass surface suddenly will show them their own reflection. In this way, You Talkin To Me? / 01:04:04 reunites seeing and hearing in the exhibition room and reinforces the You talkin to me? with an equally provocative You lookin at me?. film scholar, Kristina Köhler Some Scream and Some Don t Splatterpool, New York, 2012 Urs August Steiner, like most of us, finds pleasure in spectacle. His work often begins with an interest in this type of amusement the traveling carnival, the casino city, the movie house in which we the spectator are dazzled and seduce by bright flashing lights and promise of collective escape. What are the conditions for the dynamics of such a relationship, where desire and gratification intersect to feed the development of addiction to hypnotic passivity? Given Steiner s background in scenography, investigations begin with a dismantling of elements that constitute a given setting for amusement. Spacial configurations predetermine not only the viewpoint of a spectacle, but also the ways an audience receives and reacts to complex combinations of stimuli. Sound comes into play, as do other kinds of sensory cues. We are compelled through cultural symbols to feel elation and fear from a safe distance as our reality is subjected to twists and turns. Relief comes in knowing that at the conclusion, all will probably be well and normal again. Some Scream and Some Don t speaks directly to the spectacle of cinema and the paradoxical pleasure of horror. This work builds upon ideas from Steiner s previous work, 12 Minutes Funny Games (2011), in its focus on the use of sound in film and progresses his interest in the diversion of moving image. The flickering of light in film can often suppress the audience s awareness of how sound affects and manipulates emotion. Anxiety is built with the application of a musical soundtrack, bangs and booms; but more importantly, emotion is aroused by empathy with the way an actor s body reacts to the threat of physical danger. The horrified scream of a woman has long been the most iconic ingredient of the horror genre, dating back to pre-talkie times. It is a signal for help, a physical outlet of desperation and most likely contains a whole range of evolutionary/ survival implications. In real life, a scream can save you. In Hollywood horror, a scream can make you famous. The current installation uses Kubrick s The Shining (1980) as source material because of its precision of composition. Specifically, the climactic scene, in which Jack has descended completely into blood-thirsty madness and corners his wife, Wendy, in the caretaker s bathroom. Her shrieks grow ever more intense with the rhythmic slams of his ax into the splintering paneled door. Steiner begins by isolating the image and the sound from this scene in an objective probe into cinematic construction. The procession of work through the gallery space parallels the experience of moviegoing and unfolds the artist s method of extraction and abstraction. Visual and auditory are processed in isolation in order to find focused responses to the fragmented whole. The connection between a two dimensional screen and audience regains a physical dimension that no longer depends on the necessities of plot and chronological sense in cinema. A landmark film such as The Shining can take on its own life, letting in and putting out information into our popular cultural psyche while finding its place in the conversation between other films that came before and after. In the same manner, each of the works in this installation stands in its own space with its own impact but remains steadily in a minimalistic flow of an artistic process without a linear beginningmiddle-end. Curater, Kelly Armendariz