Nadim Vardag
“Things change their semantics when they’re looped long enough.” So says a character in NadimVardag and Michael Franz’s “Entropie”(2012), a short movie premiering at Vardag’s exhibition at Georg Kargl Fine Arts. This phrase, and the motif of spinning objects, might apply to Vardag’s entire exhibition, which comprises an array of sculptures, videos, sound, and two-dimensional works exploring the cinema and its relationship to time, the circulation of media, the digressiveness of late nights, the circularity of the spins and of cigarette-fuelled chatter.
Circles and lines. It’s a commonplace that time, like plot, is visualized as a two-dimensional line, escalating and descending. In fact, the medium that most iconically formalizes the temporality of memory, the cinema, is suffused through and through with circles and spheres: the circular gaze of a camera lens, bulbs for lighting, the camera apparatus’ spiraling screws and washers, a movie’s plot holes, spinning film reels, loops of repeating sound, and, more recently, the circulatory user uploads of internet distribution.
Appropriation is one such circle. In the exhibition space, visitors are greeted by one of Vardag's walllike sculptures constructed of Egon Eiermann tables lodged between aluminum plates, which is placed on a spinning turntable reminiscent of the rotating platforms showing products like cars or motorcycles within a commercial display. The juxtaposition of blank sculptures and a loaded, commercially-laden placement seems deadpan, but might repeat an internal contrast within the sculptures between a design classic and a formalistic aluminum plane. The tables reappear in the exhibition’s main space: as if zoomed in on and then digitally multiplied these sculptural modules will be stacked in a tribune formation. Also in this main space, new, spool-like sculptures are scattered; they recall components of a contemporary camera apparatus, but also of the rotary mechanical devices that predated film and video.
In two new videos, subjects seem to revolve around objects, but never quite touch them. Dizziness and vertigo are referenced in the new video “TITLE”, in which a flashing disco light is filmed maniacally spinning in a series of otherwise empty spaces, casting out beams of light. In “Entropie,” the loop as a motif is introduced as a phonograph being removed from a turntable, then sustained within conversational closed circuits, in appropriated footage, and in deliberately staged and stylized social settings.
To widen the circle, Vardag also includes two-dimensional works by Michael Franz and ceramics by Astrid Wagner.
Text: Pablo Larios
Biography
born 1980 in Regensburg/Germany, lives and works in Vienna
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2024
FACCIATA / FACADE / FASSADE, Spazio ORR, Brescia
2023
Condition, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna
2021
Promo, STATIONS, Berlin
Speicher, New Toni, 2021
2019
Neue Ordnung, FOX, Vienna
2018
Alte Muster, Georg Kargl BOX, Vienna
2016
Kontakt, Strabag Kunstforum, Vienna
Wiels Project Room, Brussels
2012
Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna
A Hanging at Times, Times Bar, Berlin
Repeat and Fade, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen
2011
STUDIO, Berlin
∆, Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz
2010
Augarten Contemporary, Vienna
2009
Mayerei, Karlsruhe
Permanent, Georg Kargl Permanent, Vienna
2006
Georg Kargl Box, Vienna
2005
Look, Kunstverein Kohlenhof e.V., Nuremberg
The Night, ehem. Nomadenoase, Hamburg
2004
fluc, Vienna
Selected Group Exhibitions
2024
Sold! And now? New Acquisitions from Vienna's Collection of Contemporary Art, 2018-2023, musa, Vienna
2022
When the Wind Blows, Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna
2020
Would You Be Available…, Georg Kargl Permanent, Vienna
On Heavy Rotation, Callirrhoë, Athens
Attempt at Rapprochment, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna
2019
Falling Awake, Vienna Contemporary, Vienna (Curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini)
Moves, Italic, Berlin
2018
Reduction, Gesellschaft für projektive Ästhtetik, Georg Kargl, Vienna
Black and White Landscape, A collection, Gesellschaft für Kunst und Gestaltung, Bonn
2017
CONCENTRATION - a tribute, Gesellschaft für projektive Ästhetik, Georg Kargl, Vienna
Die Kutsche im Schlamm, Memphis, Linz
Spiegelnde Fenster, 21er Haus, Vienna
White Cube – Black Box, Bank Austria Kunstforum / Tresor, Vienna
2016
Los Angeles, MAK Center at the Schindler House, Los Angeles
Away, ehem. Post u. Telegraphenamt, Vienna
De Oculis, Josephinum, Vienna
Mind Fabric, Institut de Carton, Brussels
2015
Now, At the Latest, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems
Parametics, Tamanoir, Brussels
Destination Wien, Kunsthalle, Vienna
Tetrachord, Josh Lilley Gallery, London
Suspended by Ourselves, LH40, Berlin
Transparency, Georg Kargl Fine Arts & Box, Vienna
Modell Kunstverein, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen
2014
How to disappear completely, Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck
Suspended By Ourselves, ASPN Galerie, Leipzig
2D23D, Galerie Ostlicht, Vienna
Artists’ Film Club, ICA, London
Texte in der Kunst, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna
2013
Wiederholen und Ausblenden, mumok, Vienna
Works On Paper, Galerie Tobias Naehring, Berlin
Groupshow, Forum Stadtpark, Graz
in progress – Werke aus der mumok Sammlung, mumok, Vienna
Backwards into Paradise, Flood, Dublin
Fotos, 21er Haus, Vienna
2012
Reflecting Fashion, mumok, Vienna
Drawing Quote, Pigna Project Space, Rome
Sleepwalking, Freies Museum, Berlin
Die (II), Coco, Vienna
2011
Ein psycho-geographischer Plan, Galerie Max Mayer, Dusseldorf
Single Museum, Kunstraum Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf
Dancing to the Rhyme, Kumho Museum, Seoul
2010
Pattern Recognition, PS Project Space, Amsterdam
Triennale Linz 1.0, OK Offenes Kulturhaus Oberösterreich, Linz
Fine Line, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna
Lebt und arbeitet in Wien III, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna
2009
BC21 Art Award, Augarten Contemporary, Vienna
Endlosschleifen, Lothringer 13 Laden, München
Le Sang d’un poète, Biennal St. Nazaire-Nantes, Nantes
ConceptIOUS, Galerie Jette Rudolph, Berlin
Nothingness and Being, Fundación/Colección Jumex, Mexico City
Trick of the Light, MOP, Sydney
Filmsalon, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nuremberg
2008
Three Black Minutes, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Stuttgart
difference, what difference?, Art Forum, Berlin
Scene Missing, Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin
Scene Missing, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna
2007
Kino wie noch nie, Akademie der Künste, Berlin
Fade to Grey, Bell Street Project Space, Vienna
This is Happening, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Wien
2006
Crosskick, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig
Kino wie noch nie, Generali Foundation, Vienna
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