Discordo Ergo Sum

2019 marks the first time in the history of Austria’s participation in the Biennale di Venezia that a woman artist, Renate Bertlmann, will be presented in a solo exhibition in the Austrian Pavilion. By selecting Bertlmann, the curator Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein wants to send a signal that is more in line with the actual artistic landscape and considers structural imbalances. For the exhibition, Renate Bertlmann has conceived a new two-part, site-specific installation that, in accordance with her overall approach, is characterized by high formal and conceptual precision. Based on the artist’s programmatic axiom, Amo Ergo Sum, an impressive piece in front of the Pavilion and a sprawling installation spread out across the Pavilion’s entire courtyard will display an artistic commentary that will make the existential ambivalence of the human experience tangible in both form and content. In this sphere, generated in an interplay of material and aesthetic intensities, viewers can experience a basic tension that, on the one hand, reveals itself as a critical individual and sociopolitical phenomenon of global developments and, on the other, makes clear the transformative potential of art in reception- and perception-aesthetic and sociopolitical contexts. The Pavilion itself serves as a contemplation zone that, in the sense of a cartographic perspective, places central aspects of Bertlmann’s art since the 1970s in a relationship with the new installation in Venice. Renate Bertlmann (*1943 in Vienna) studied at the Academy of Arts in Oxford in 1962/63 and subsequently at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna until 1970. After graduating in Painting and Restoration, she was a lecturer at the Department of Conservation and Technology at the Academy until 1982. She lives and works in Vienna. In her work Bertlmann explores representations of roles and bodies, questioning gender relationships by discussing subjects like pornography, sexuality, violence, Eros, and hierarchy. Her works are particularly characterized by a provocative, ironic approach. She has been a member of the Vienna Secession since 1993 and a co-editor of the magazine [Sic!] – Forum für feministische Gangarten since 1994. In 2007, she received the Prize of the City of Vienna and in 2017, the Grand Austrian State Prize. Renate Bertlmann is represented by Galerie Steinek and Richard Saltoun Gallery.

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Giardini

Venice, NY