MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ: Energy Clothescurated by Sydney Fishman
Galerie Krinzinger, Seilerstätte 16, 1010 Vienna
Opening: Thursday, May 25, 2023, 7pm Duration: May 26 – July 29, 2023
Opening speech: Adrian Heathfield, writer and curator
After solo exhibitions in 1992, 2012 and 2018 at the Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna, Marina Abramović will present new works in an exhibition entitled Marina Abramović: Energy Clothes curated by Sydney Fishman, on view from May 26 to July 29, 2023.
The exhibition will showcase Marina Abramović’s body of work, Energy Clothes, conceived in 2001 and being realized for the first time at Galerie Krinzinger. Marina Abramović will present a large format photo series, alongside drawings, photographs, videos and objects presented to illuminate Marina's long standing investigation of energy and the ways in which it is transmitted in ordinary everyday life.The Energy Clothes were developed in 2001 during a course Marina Abramović was teaching at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Italy and then further explored that same year at the Calder Foundation The Energy Clothes were developed in 2001 during a course Marina Abramović was teaching at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Italy and then further explored that same year at the Calder Foundation in Saché, France. Marina Abramovic produced a series of objects to be worn as clothing, Energy Hats, Energy Masks and Energy Bands, made of locally sourced silk in seven bright colors and with magnets as the energy force. Working directly with her students, Marina Abramović instructed them on how to use the clothing as they went about actions and situations of their daily routines - taking a bath, ironing the clothes, watering the plants, brushing the teeth - unveiling the Energy Clothes prompt to the public for an internal meditation possible in ordinary life.Seen as an extension of Marina Abramović’s series Transitory Objects for Human Use, the Energy Clothes share the same intention - to be an object for the public to use to retrieve, transmit and trigger energy within the body. In the exhibition, Marina Abramovic: Energy Clothes, Marina Abramović and her students are representation of the public, sharing a glimpse at this somewhat utopian reality in which art truly crosses into the public's sphere and is used in practice to nurture, explore and balance the soul. The artworks exhibited have been extracted from Marina Abramović archive, untouched for over two decades, and shown alongside photographic works taken twenty years later, sharing the transcendence of Abramovic relationship to this body of work and her ongoing life-long exploration of the energy and the public.In the cabinet, Marina Abramović is also presenting four early photographic works from her performances Rhythm 2 (1974/1994), Rhythm 4 (1974/1994), Rhythm 10 (1973/2014) and Freeing the Voice (1975/2014).Marina Abramović is a pioneer of performance as a visual art form. Since the 1970s, she has used her body as a subject and as a medium in her grueling long-term performances to exhaust her physical, mental and emotional boundaries – often even risking her life in search of enhanced awareness, transcendence and self-transformation. For the Serbian artist, the concept of time is an important aspect in her work as well as the inclusion of the public. The significance of this dimension of her work could be seen in her performances.Another constant in her work is the preoccupation with new forms of living, states of consciousness and energy. On her many travels, she came into contact with Asian philosophies and the ceremonies of the indigenous peoples of Australia and Latin America. For Marina Abramović, performance is the art of transferring a state of consciousness to the audience. Her focus is on radicalism, self-control, willpower and endurance, which Abramović has proven time and again in her numerous performances. Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade in the early 1970s, Marina Abramović has pioneered her performances as a visual art form, creating some of her most important early works. The body has always been both
subject and medium. In her works, which ritualise the simple actions of daily life, she explores her physical and mental limits, enduring pain, exhaustion and danger in her quest for emotional and spiritual transformation.Marina Abramović's works – performances, sounds, photographs, videos, sculptures, and transitory objects for human and non-human use – have been featured in numerous solo exhibitions in the US and Europe, and in many large international group exhibitions, as, for instance, at the Biennale di Venezia (1976 and 1997) and at the documenta VI, VII and XI in Kassel. Marina Abramović was awarded the Golden Lion as Best Artist for her extraordinary video installation / performance Balkan Baroque, her reaction to the Yugoslavian war in 1997. In 2003, she received the Bessie Award for her 12-day performance The House with the Ocean View at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. In 2005, the premiere of the performance series Seven Easy Pieces took place in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 2008, she was awarded by the now former President of Austria Heinz Fischer the Austrian Decoration of Honour for Science and Art.In 2011, she was appointed Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Arts (Hon. RA), London. With her performance and retrospective The Artist is Present at the MoMA, New York in 2010 which also played a major role in the eponymous film co-produced by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, she was awarded the Panorama Audience Award in the documentary film category in 2012 following the first European showing at the 62nd International Film Festival in Berlin. In the same year Abramović's opera performance The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, directed by Robert Wilson, premiered at the Teatro Real in Madrid and the participatory project The Abramović Method took place for the first time at the PAC in Milan. In 2014 she performed 512 Hours at the London Serpentine Gallery and 2016 she released her gripping autobiography Walk Through Walls. In 2018 the retrospective The Cleaner travelled from the Moderna Museet, Stockholm to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, the Henie Onstad Art Center, Høvikodden and the Kunsthalle Bonn and in 2019 to the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, the Center of Contemporary Art Torun, Poland and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia. In 2020 the performance 7 deaths of Maria Callas premiered at the Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Germany. From September 23 to December 10, 2023, The Royal Academy of Arts, London is showing the solo exhibition After Life. From spring 2024, the show COMING AND GOING by Marina Abramović can be seen in further solo exhibition at the Stedeljik Museum, Amsterdam.As early as 1975 selected works by Marina Abramović and her performance Thomas Lips were to be seen under the title Photo Documentation of Performances Rhythms 10, 2, 5, 4, 0 at Galerie Krinzinger in Innsbruck. In October 1976, Marina Abramovic was a participant at the performance festival in an old school in Brdo, Slovenia, organized by Ursula Krinzinger and Peter Weiermair. Nine years later, the artist convinced with the work Photographic Documentation of Performance 3 in the group exhibition Symbol Tier (1985) also in the Innsbruck gallery. In 1992, Marina Abramović surprised the Viennese audience with her solo exhibition Transitory Objects (There is also a publication on the occasion of this exhibition).In 2012, Marina Abramović showed With Eyes Closed I See Happiness, self-portraits and objects. In 2017, the series Holding Emptiness (2012) was exhibited in the group show ICON and in 2018 she showed with Two Hearts her last solo exhibition with Galerie Krinzinger. Marina Abramović was born in Belgrade in 1946, now she lives and works in New York.
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