Siegfried Anzinger – a vortex of emotions (en) - a podcast by CastYourArt.com

Siegfried Anzinger – a vortex of emotions
The focus of the exhibition in the Bank Austria Kunstforum, curated by Florian Steininger, is mainly on the pictures made in distemper -especially for this show- during the years 2012 and 2013. Besides the large-format paintings there are watercolours and pastel drawings on display, together with some works from the period of Anzinger’s participation in the 1988 Venice Biennale, making it possible to follow the radical changes in his style over the years.
His career took off at the time of the Neue Wilde painters of the 1980ies, he was a participating artist at Documenta 7 and the Venice Biennale, and in 2003 he received the Grand Austrian State Prize.
In the halls of the Kunstforum we are introduced into a unique kind of installation, presenting an amusing and ironic interpretation of the practice and history of painting.
The exhibition resumes the spirit pervading Anzingers work, with its references to mythology, art history and religion. Anzinger omits conceptual or minimalistic representation, preferring more baroque options, maintaining his own very independent and unique position.

In Anzinger’s work, the immediacy between thought and the fulfilled reality produces the substantiality of drawing and painting. Anzinger does not accept any limitations to his liberty of imagination. There are recognizable references to history of art and religion; nevertheless they are devoid of real representation. He sidesteps affectedness, artificiality or psychological investigation in order to offer a more philosophical outlook to the viewer, possibly with some autobiographical hints and allusions.

Human iconography being at the centre of his work, he also experiments with the reduction of forms to symbols, thus creating a limitless world of creative possibilities. Anzinger is a thoughtful artist where nothing in his pictures is there by pure chance. Despite a quick and erratic flow there is an accurate thought process in which every single element is meticulously thought out.

Indians, pigs, cowboys and other characters seem to balance the scenery into equilibrium. Walking through the exhibition gives the impression of quickly browsing through a volume on the history of painting, classical imagery being present but as a reinterpretation by the cinemato-graphical vision of the artist.
The internal coherence of Anzingers universe is remarkable. At first the viewer feels overwhelmed by the torrent of very personal images but finally the continuous dialogue between the various paintings becomes recognizable. These are characters in temporality, images that stay stored and engraved in memory, fleeting reminiscences that are depicted and materialized without any more cohesion than their mutual possibilities of combination.
In these absurd scenarios irrationality is present in an enormously magnified mode. In spite of the muted pastel colours and the serene facial expressions, some of the protagonists are victims of extremely unpleasant situations, apparently emanating from a nightmare.
In the manner of a performance artist and with a keen sense of theatrical orchestration Anzinger choreographs and positions his characters in space, in a carefully balanced equilibrium between tragedy, comedy and the absurd. The cast of characters keeps returning in ever new compositions and settings, in snapshots of the players in ambivalently comical scenes, where Anzinger calls for a narrative discourse in which he can illustrate stories as metaphors and where he can depict mythological events as well as contemporary space.
Siegfried Anzinger lives and works in Cologne. The exhibition is held from February 13 until April 27, 2014. (written by Cem Angeli)

Further episodes of CastYourArt - Watch Art Now

Further podcasts by CastYourArt.com

Website of CastYourArt.com