Barbara Anna Husar: I AM THE MEDIUM

29 January 2010 – 20 Febuary 2010

“after colossal uterus with upraised ovary_generation of diverse umbilical cord powders _docking in nomadizing primal culture forms_olfactorical herding-phenomenologies_anal plugs in levy walls, generating art current_right now in bilbao on the trail of the oldest bones_strap me in another sphere of the interfritteusial net”

The herd continues to wander – after DATA EXCHANGE and MY SECOND HERD, Galerie Konzett now presents the latest group of works from the 2009 Hubert Berchtold art prize winner, Barbara Husar: BONE ME UP. Dinosaurs, ancient creatures and colossal skeletons, formal messages from a time before time, are the objects of artistic research.

Selected by the Kunsthaus Bregenz for the Artist in Residence program, which takes place each year in exchange with the Fundación Bilbao Arte Fundazioa, Husar (*1975, Feldkirch) spent two months in Bilbao in autumn of 2009. That she happened upon the “oldest bones” here was not completely unintended: the view of the Guggenheim Museum, which dominates the cityscape like a Titan and a pulsating organism, was the artist’s inspiration for the huge paintings. The canvases were up to 20 square meters in size, made of woven polypropyline sacks for her “integral painting,” with which she wants to fathom the quality of the place, its people, but also the essence of things.

Thus, the Punschosaurus is more than the bizarre fusion of an Austrian dessert with American architecture on Basque ground. It stands allegorically for atomic structures, ancient codes that lie at the base of all existence, and find their own expression in most diverse cultural forms. After neuronal networking and umbilical cords as a means of comprehensive communication, Husar’s dinosaurs are temple guards, which attempt to maintain secondary connections, leading to new synergies: “I am part, parcel, and particle accelerator,” says Husar and lets the atoms dance.

Text: Susanne Längle