Paul Horn - TO EVELY AGE ITS ART, TO EVELY ARLT ITS FLEE TIME

June 11 - July 31., 2015

Paul Horn is a multimedia artist. Without placing one or the other means of expression into the center, he frequently combines the advantages and conditions of different artistic media in order to create a new entity: a work, an event, an experience or a room. His exhibitions often consist of different artistic media, similarly are his individual works carefully considered compositions of various genres. Thereby  the used artistic means refer on the one hand to their own historicality, on the other hand they go beyond it and link with actual discourses and interrogations of our time. 

In his third solo show in our gallery, Paul Horn is using the motto of the Vienna Secession as exhibition title in a modified, ironical way „DERZEIT IRRE KVNST, DER KUNST IHRE FREIZEIT“ (to evely age its art, to evely arlt its flee time). For the exhibition Paul Horn created a new, sustainable, bourgeois living space compound of appropriate art works. Most of the works consist of recycle materials, found objects, remainders or waste products. The indoor fountain, a water sculpture which is irrigating a popular indoor plant and improving the indoor climate, is a miniature version of a Aquaponic System which was originally developed as alternative for industrial agriculture. Aquaponic is a closed water and nutrition system which was created and is used for resource-efficient breeding of crops and fishes. Paul Horns indoor fountain on the one hand seizes on the trend of the withdrawal into the private space - whereas the indoor fountain embodies the peculiar emblem of such a movement - on the other hand the sculpture transfers the global, public and everybody directly affecting problem of fading resources into our ‚feel-good oases‘.

Another part of Paul Horns living environment are the woven fabric ‚paintings' which consist of various fabric tapes, strings, cords or ropes. They are woven like carpets and mimic abstract paintings, but they don’t represent any values of a bourgeoisie or middle class. They are not an expression of an inner world as often reflected in portraits, landscape paintings, abstraction, still life or other genres of painting, rather they act as a reference of outer conditions. Facts, systems and changes in the environment that are surrounding us and which don’t stop in front of our protected worlds. 

Yet another symbol of such living spaces which Paul Horn confronts with today’s world is the chandelier. For the exhibition he made a french and a venetian model, a hanging sculpture from the ceiling, but instead of crystals he used crumpled pet-bottles and little brandy bottles. The glory and history of chandeliers as a sign of power and wealth appears in a new, dimed light.

How about the residents of this infiltrated living environment? They keep themselves busy with new forms of communication and exchange as Paul Horns new short film shows illuminatively.