Heimo Zobernig: chess painting

Since the 1980s, Vienna-based artist Heimo Zobernig (b 1958, Mauthen, Austria) has been working in sculpture, painting, installation, performance, and video. He has built a rigorous practice that continually pushes back against the tropes of Modernism and seeks to reorient the role of the artist, the institution, the audience, and the artwork itself. Zobernig uses the museum and its architecture as a stage; he allows a viewer to confront the constructed, at times theatrical, experience of visiting an art exhibition. He playfully acknowledges and amplifies methods of display and design—balancing form and function—in questioning the hierarchies and mechanisms at work in the presentation and understanding of an artwork. In doing so, he blurs the line between what constitutes a painting, a sculpture, the architecture, and the interior furniture of a gallery, such as pedestals, benches, and other furnishings. Where does the exhibition start and stop?

chess painting is an extension of a project initiated at the Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, in 2016.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, Heimo Zobernig: Books & Posters, Catalogue Raisonné 1980–2015: 114 Books, 117 Posters offers an original and comprehensive overview of his 114 artist’s books, monographs and exhibition catalogues, as well as 117 posters.

Heimo Zobernig: Books & Posters, Catalogue Raisonné 1980–2015: 114 Books, 117 Posters