Components of a Possible Exhibition Krobath Vienna
Components of a Possible Exhibition
March–April 2009
Installation views:
Hannes Boeck
Krobath Vienna
Components of a Possible Exhibition (2009) is the title chosen by Austrian artist Dorit Margreiter for a work that brings together a number of different objects: photographs, sculptures, partitions, and plinths, all of which could be used as part of an exhibition.
Lined up along the photographic picture plane, they offer themselves both to the viewer's gaze and for a future usage- one that would necessarily alter the way they are arranged, shifting their relative positions. Exhibiting is clearly revealed as a practice that assumes different spatial and temporal contexts. First, it implies transposition from one place to another, both in a concrete physical sense and in terms of the social, aesthetic, or discursive constitution of sites. And second, in the temporal dimension of the act of transposition, it separates before and after, thus implying an inherent historicity as well as an orientation toward the future.
According to the title, the things shown in Margreiter's photographs find themselves in a state of potential, assuming a future deployment in connection with an exhibition. At the same time, the arrangement in which they are presented already constitutes an exhibition context that points to a preceding deployment of the individual components in a different setting, highlighting the fact that the practice of exhibiting exposes the participants to a spatiotemporal difference. The resulting disassociation can be explained in etymological terms with reference to the Latin exponere (to set forth, explain, expose) in which the prefix "ex" (out) is added to the verb "ponere" (to place, put).
The shape taken by this spatiotemporal difference in each specific case determines the meaning, status, function, and effect of those involved and also the relations between them. These participants include not just the exhibits, but also the variously involved persons-artists, curators, gallerists, museum directors, visitors, critics, scholars, and so on-as well as displays, spaces, institutions, and discourses. Taking Margreiter's work as an example of such an "interobjectively" structured practice of transfer between localities and temporalities, I will examine one of the "components" she brought together for a possible exhibition-a freestanding section of wall. The focus here is on the critical potential of exhibiting based on its links with three cultural practices: interrupting, translating, and making-public.[…]
excerpt from Beatrice von Bismarck Material Agency. Pause and Expose in the Practice of Dorit Margreiter, in Beatrice von Bismarck: The Curatorial Condition; Sternberg Press (2022)
Beatrice von Bismarck: The Curatorial Condition