Dario Wokurka

Untitled Solo Exhibition

Even before they became watercolors, they were already watercolors. Before that, they were already images: views of the bust of the philosopher's loved one in the catalog of an auction house for example, a photo from a newspaper, well-known paintings, templates from various other sources, or Chinese scholar painting. Painterly interesting appearances, whose basic characteristics were taken over and provided with further elements. There is an appropriating, combinatory relationship to the choice of elements within these images and their expansion in space. They are placed in relation to each other in the picture, directly in the frame object, but also in the exhibition situation. With this approach, both the choice of elements and equally the decision of their combination are vested with meaning. This, however, is guided less by symbolism than by a close observation of the field of painting, which is not indebted to the relevances and classifications of recent art history. Certainly there are preferences here, but then precisely within works and contexts that pursue a similar interest: to counter the problematic fields of painting of their respective time with a self-supporting and questioning work that actively incorporates the main features of the medium itself in its production.

The watercolors under the painted color are print-outs of previously made watercolors. They therefore already contain a form of distancing, which manifests itself in a technical reduction in reproduction of the drawing, which is then worked out again new and in color. In a kind of push-pull of layering and shifting, there is a sequence in the production that organizes various gestures of withdrawal and combinatorial abundance and finally comes to a halt in meta-narrative appearing watercolors (!). Be sure to have the artist explain and describe the elements and contexts of the picture content to you, should the opportunity arise.

The exhibition itself is thematized in several places in Untitled Solo Exhibition: such as in the titles of the works, which seem equally referential and playful, as an approach that transcends the conventional, and in the distinctive framing, which on one hand turns the watercolors into a series, and on the other hand, calls up the format of a vitrine. Even in this “flat” version found here, the characteristic of a vitrine is indicated: presentation and highlighting within a space in the room that is “ordered” according to one's own ideas.

It is precisely this “presentation” that is conscious of itself as a simultaneous doing and showing through a combination of informed, appropriating, but definitely also inspired procedures. It is at least as much about making an appearance (as a question addressing the showing and contextualizing art) as it is about creating an image (with reference to differences in origins and relationships between images as such).

Melanie Ohnemus translated by Georg Kargl Fine Arts