26.09.–24.11.2013
Kabinett

Jakob Lena Knebl
An Eye on the Disposition of a Cloud

Opening: September 25, 2013, 7 p.m.

Jakob Lena Knebl deals with issues involving the body, performativity, and normativity in her work.

Reality is a subjective truth that Jakob Lena Knebl tries to negotiate in her new work An Eye on the Disposition of a Cloud for the exhibit in the Salzburger Kunstverein’s Cabinet. While her previous work has been based on methods of trickery – something pretends to be something different, thereby finagling the viewers’ attention – here the artist goes even further and deals with the theory of radical constructivism in depth. This states that there is not one “reality,” but rather that every person creates his or her own world based on personal experiences; as a result, there are several reality constructions.

The mechanism where she fills that which is visually pleasant with powerful political messages remains intact in Knebl’s artistic practice, but this time he also questions trickery – because when something pretends to be something different, who defines that it is not the other thing that depicts “reality” and “truth”?

An Eye on the Disposition of a Cloud devises a system of codes and norms that the viewers can agree on, so that they reconstruct a shared “reality” and the exhibit becomes a valid “truth” – if only temporary. In his artwork Knebl works from the assumption that we as subjects have the chance to engage in this system. In order to offer up a kind of evidence, the artist adopts René Magritte’s approach for the exhibit. Magritte’s aim was to set a process in motion through his absurd images that would prompt the viewers to deconstruct general assumptions of “reality”. In Knebl’s exhibit, viewers move between formal “no goes” in an atmosphere of almost “uncool” romanticism of Fledermaus sofas, Murano glass sculptures, and supposed curtain rods of brass. By collecting designer pieces for her installations, Jakob Lena Knebl deliberately questions the “original” character of things, the original function intended for an object, which she then reduces and recomposes. In doing so, the artist demonstrates how strongly we distinguish between design and art, a separation that Knebl would like to dissolve for the viewers in her artistic practice. Because this separation does not exist for Jakob Lena Knebl in her works – a construction of reality with no categories – neither gender-specific nor artistic. A “reality” that is entirely her “own.”
(Mirian Kathrein)

Jakob Lena Knebl, born 1970 in Baden, lives and works in Vienna. www.jakoblenaknebl.com