GERWALD ROCKENSCHAUB
geomagnetic
November 16, 2024 to February 1, 2025
° ° ° ° ° ° °
Photos © Marjorie Brunet Plaza
„He's got plastic flowers growing up the walls,
He eats plastic food with a plastic knife and fork,
He likes plastic cups and saucers 'cause they never break,
And he likes to lick his gravy off a plastic plate.” (1)
In the early 1980s, Rockenschaub began to develop a formal repertoire: his own personal Mnemosyne Atlas consisting of everyday imagery, logos, pictograms, and street signs – using Rolf Dieter Brinkmann’s words, “the possibility of everything you see and deal with becoming a poem if only you see it clearly enough and reproduce it immediately enough.”’ (2) In Rockenschaub’s work, these profane codes and patterns become auratic, hyper-realistic renderings. And just as new genres such as house and techno emerged with the technologisation of music, Rockenschaub also consistently transitioned to the virtual studio a few years later. Instead of using brush and paint on canvas as in the beginning, Rockenschaub’s works have been created digitally on the computer for several decades and are sent as plans to workshops that carry them out. This practically eliminates the need for a studio, meaning no fixed location, and only those materials actually necessary for production are needed. This, too, is forward-thinking. Keep up with the times and time won’t pass you by.
Repeatedly, one finds that Rockenschaub’s spatial installations contain a “delaying moment,” increasing the dynamics and generating tension. In this exhibition, for example, the black line on the outer wall has a lower edge of 152 cm, compared to 155 cm in a previous exhibition at Eva Presenhuber earlier this year. Rockenschaub calls this micro-piggishness. “Funky Minimal” was the title of his exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg in 1999, and one cannot help but think of Thomas Bernhard: “I don’t make an effort, but now and then I do allow myself an arousal.” (3) The Viennese jest is always to be found wherever Rockenschaub is; speaking about his time as a student at The University of Applied Arts in Vienna, he says, “Back then, the Bildende (4) was ‘oarsch’ (crap), today both (5) are.” Many years later, his advice to students is, “Become a banker, become a gangster.” Unsurprisingly, he hardly spent any time there as a student; instead, he attended legendary jazz concerts by Sun Ra in Burgenland or Prince’s Purple Rain Tour, played guitar in a New Wave band since 1980, and spent a lot of time in New York. Between 1995 and 2001, he ran a nomadic techno and drum and bass club in Vienna called “the audioroom,” which occasionally took place in the former Faculty of Veterinary Medicine or the then-closed 20er Haus (now Belvedere 21).
The Earth’s magnetic field is created by the so-called “geodynamo.” This process is based on the movement of liquid metal in the Earth’s outer core, which generates electrical currents and, thus, a magnetic field. (6)
Intensity, Inclination, Declination.
Invariably, the focus is on painting and spatiality. What used to be the dialectic of figure and ground now centres on the relation between picture and wall. Rockenschaub describes it as “painting as a means of making a contemporary statement” – a reflection on the medium itself. In his choice of colours, he also references painting rather than being restricted by the RGB colours of his computer screen. There is lime green, a sunny-golden yellow tone, grass green, purple, coral red, rosé, almost glowing orange, slate grey, and radiant sky blue – all strictly geometric in form and casually, rhythmically distributed across the white walls. One can hardly speak of individual paintings or works, though, as they are more like complete spatial interventions, walk-in sculptures, neatly planned and filed in folders on his desktop.
When Rockenschaub, together with Andrea Fraser and Christian Philipp Müller, presented at the Venice Biennale’s Austrian Pavilion in 1993, his contribution consisted of nothing more than a walkable scaffolding on which visitors were guided up and down through the space. In his painterly works, too, he defines the “outer boundaries, the scaffolding,” as he puts it.
Everything begins with an analysis of the architectural conditions, which are explored with careful consideration of rhythm and dramaturgy. In the case of the Wilhelm Hallen, “An almost square room with a pillar in the centre,” preceded by a black line. A Horizon? A Score? Synaesthesia? It is around this architecture that Rockenschaub composes – orchestrates – a “show.” In this case, colourfully lacquered MDF objects. Other work series not exhibited here consist of acrylic glass, aluminium, PVC, and coloured foil on Alucore.
What is too much, and what is too little? When does it vibrate? Knowing how far too far you can go. (7) One finds a continuous play with ambivalence, with the hidden, the obvious, and the “possibilities of thinking itself.”
What you see is what you see. (8)
On my way home, I read on Wikipedia that some animals have a magnetic sense – magnetoreception. For example, bees, mole rats, domestic pigeons, migratory birds, salmon, sea turtles, sharks, and probably whales. They use the Earth’s magnetic field for spatial orientation.
And a little further down: Dogs, too, orientate themselves like this; during phases of calm geomagnetic activity, they align accordingly when defecating and urinating, preferring to do their business in a north-south direction. (9)
Text by Leonie Herweg
Translation by Katerine Niedinger
MDF lacquered, 2024
30 x 30 x 3 cm
MDF lacquered, 2024
Overall: 43,5 x 410,5 cm
Object 1: 8 x 120 x 3 cm
Object 2: 8 x 120 x 3 cm
Object 3: 8 x 120 x 3 cm
Object 4: 15 x 15 x 3 cm
MDF lacquered, 2024
30 x 30 x 3 cm
MDF lacquered, 2024
15 x 75 x 3 cm
MDF lacquered, 2024
Overall : 68.5 x 169 cm
Object 1: 15 x 15 x 3 cm
Object 2: 38 x 38 x 3 cm
Object 3: 16 x 110 x 3 cm
GERWALD ROCKENSCHAUB
geomagnetic
November 16, 2024 to February 1, 2025
Photos © Marjorie Brunet Plaza
„He's got plastic flowers growing up the walls,
He eats plastic food with a plastic knife and fork,
He likes plastic cups and saucers 'cause they never break,
And he likes to lick his gravy off a plastic plate.” (1)
In the early 1980s, Rockenschaub began to develop a formal repertoire: his own personal Mnemosyne Atlas consisting of everyday imagery, logos, pictograms, and street signs – using Rolf Dieter Brinkmann’s words, “the possibility of everything you see and deal with becoming a poem if only you see it clearly enough and reproduce it immediately enough.”’ (2) In Rockenschaub’s work, these profane codes and patterns become auratic, hyper-realistic renderings. And just as new genres such as house and techno emerged with the technologisation of music, Rockenschaub also consistently transitioned to the virtual studio a few years later. Instead of using brush and paint on canvas as in the beginning, Rockenschaub’s works have been created digitally on the computer for several decades and are sent as plans to workshops that carry them out. This practically eliminates the need for a studio, meaning no fixed location, and only those materials actually necessary for production are needed. This, too, is forward-thinking. Keep up with the times and time won’t pass you by.
Repeatedly, one finds that Rockenschaub’s spatial installations contain a “delaying moment,” increasing the dynamics and generating tension. In this exhibition, for example, the black line on the outer wall has a lower edge of 152 cm, compared to 155 cm in a previous exhibition at Eva Presenhuber earlier this year. Rockenschaub calls this micro-piggishness. “Funky Minimal” was the title of his exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg in 1999, and one cannot help but think of Thomas Bernhard: “I don’t make an effort, but now and then I do allow myself an arousal.” (3) The Viennese jest is always to be found wherever Rockenschaub is; speaking about his time as a student at The University of Applied Arts in Vienna, he says, “Back then, the Bildende (4) was ‘oarsch’ (crap), today both (5) are.” Many years later, his advice to students is, “Become a banker, become a gangster.” Unsurprisingly, he hardly spent any time there as a student; instead, he attended legendary jazz concerts by Sun Ra in Burgenland or Prince’s Purple Rain Tour, played guitar in a New Wave band since 1980, and spent a lot of time in New York. Between 1995 and 2001, he ran a nomadic techno and drum and bass club in Vienna called “the audioroom,” which occasionally took place in the former Faculty of Veterinary Medicine or the then-closed 20er Haus (now Belvedere 21).
The Earth’s magnetic field is created by the so-called “geodynamo.” This process is based on the movement of liquid metal in the Earth’s outer core, which generates electrical currents and, thus, a magnetic field. (6)
Intensity, Inclination, Declination.
Invariably, the focus is on painting and spatiality. What used to be the dialectic of figure and ground now centres on the relation between picture and wall. Rockenschaub describes it as “painting as a means of making a contemporary statement” – a reflection on the medium itself. In his choice of colours, he also references painting rather than being restricted by the RGB colours of his computer screen. There is lime green, a sunny-golden yellow tone, grass green, purple, coral red, rosé, almost glowing orange, slate grey, and radiant sky blue – all strictly geometric in form and casually, rhythmically distributed across the white walls. One can hardly speak of individual paintings or works, though, as they are more like complete spatial interventions, walk-in sculptures, neatly planned and filed in folders on his desktop.
When Rockenschaub, together with Andrea Fraser and Christian Philipp Müller, presented at the Venice Biennale’s Austrian Pavilion in 1993, his contribution consisted of nothing more than a walkable scaffolding on which visitors were guided up and down through the space. In his painterly works, too, he defines the “outer boundaries, the scaffolding,” as he puts it.
Everything begins with an analysis of the architectural conditions, which are explored with careful consideration of rhythm and dramaturgy. In the case of the Wilhelm Hallen, “An almost square room with a pillar in the centre,” preceded by a black line. A Horizon? A Score? Synaesthesia? It is around this architecture that Rockenschaub composes – orchestrates – a “show.” In this case, colourfully lacquered MDF objects. Other work series not exhibited here consist of acrylic glass, aluminium, PVC, and coloured foil on Alucore.
What is too much, and what is too little? When does it vibrate? Knowing how far too far you can go. (7) One finds a continuous play with ambivalence, with the hidden, the obvious, and the “possibilities of thinking itself.”
What you see is what you see. (8)
On my way home, I read on Wikipedia that some animals have a magnetic sense – magnetoreception. For example, bees, mole rats, domestic pigeons, migratory birds, salmon, sea turtles, sharks, and probably whales. They use the Earth’s magnetic field for spatial orientation.
And a little further down: Dogs, too, orientate themselves like this; during phases of calm geomagnetic activity, they align accordingly when defecating and urinating, preferring to do their business in a north-south direction. (9)
Text by Leonie Herweg
Translation by Katerine Niedinger
MDF lacquered, 2024
30 x 30 x 3 cm
MDF lacquered, 2024
Overall: 43,5 x 410,5 cm
Object 1: 8 x 120 x 3 cm
Object 2: 8 x 120 x 3 cm
Object 3: 8 x 120 x 3 cm
Object 4: 15 x 15 x 3 cm
MDF lacquered, 2024
30 x 30 x 3 cm
MDF lacquered, 2024
15 x 75 x 3 cm
MDF lacquered, 2024
Overall : 68.5 x 169 cm
Object 1: 15 x 15 x 3 cm
Object 2: 38 x 38 x 3 cm
Object 3: 16 x 110 x 3 cm