Gregor Podnar Vienna is pleased to present Another Aspect, A Different Ratio, Alexander Gutke’s fifth solo show with the gallery.
Alexander Gutke’s work conveys a strong poetic and clear visual language and touches upon multi-layered perceptions. Gutke deals with perceptual processes that the technical achievements bring with it, from letterpress printing to the high-resolution video screen. Apparatuses, for instance, that we created to view the external world show their own interior and are transformed into a mysterious self-reflection. Analog forms of visualisation are replaced by digital media and vice versa. Gutke deploys romantic and fascinating, sometimes also reflexive imagery.
The exhibition features a selection of works created during the last few years as well as the artist’s newest project A Certain Aspect, A Different Ratio that lends the title to the show. As an inspiration and the starting point, Gutke states technical ideas developed by French astronomer and inventor Henri Chrétien in the 1920s that enabled the introduction of the Cinemascope widescreen format later on. Taking poetic distance from science and technology and using sparse means such as white light, some dust particles and film scratches, he creates a 3D animation that opens up the space like a window, appearing to continue far beyond the physical wall.
His further work, Surface Tension, also takes inspiration from cinema, as does the sculpture Beam that takes the shape of a folding screen, showing a photograph of a beam of light against a black void, or the installation Curtain Call, where a red theatre curtain becomes a backdrop to the opening credits of the 20th Century Fox’s first movie in the Cinemascope format. Taken out of its context and installed in a dark space, the projection shows the red curtain opening and closing to an open space, bathed in a bright, warm light and in the same time invoking the idea of a lost era and evoking expectations of something new and spectacular.
Alexander Gutke (1971) lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. He graduated from the Malmö Art Academy, Sweden. His solo shows include Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, USA; Kunsthaus Baselland and Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland; Malmö Konsthall, Sweden; Culturgest, Portugal among others. His works are included in public collections such as Frac Lorraine, Metz, France; Frac Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France; Institut d’Art Contemporain (IAC), Villeurbanne, France; Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz/Basel, Switzerland; Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö, Sweden; Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Montreal, Canada.
The exhibition will be on view until July 15th. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday, 11am to 6pm, Saturday 11am to 4pm. For more information or inquiries, please contact the gallery at
vienna@gregorpodnar.com.