Franz Kapfer:

Atlanten – Ich oder das Chaos

22.6.–1.9.2024

In his installations and performances Franz Kapfer explores processes of the writing of history and their forms of political representation. He undertakes analyses of historical and political processes by looking at their various inscriptions in physical entities, forms of behavior, historical buildings, and monuments, and reflects their influence on today’s society and our everyday lives.

Within the scope of the Würdigungspreis des Landes Steiermark für Bildende Kunst 2022 Kapfer will produce a new group of large-format works that address the mythical figure and sculptural tradition of Atlas statues while linking this to existing works. Atlas sculptures are muscular vertical male figures used in architecture, based on the figure of Atlas, the Titan bearer of the heavens in Greek mythology. Their ​“heroic“ history has been represented in various forms and in many epochs since antiquity and right up to the present day, when they are sometimes seen in the form of cheap imitations by power-hungry dictators staging themselves as Titans. Over the course of a long period of research including several-months of stays in Mexico City, Kyiv, Istanbul, and Jerusalem, Kapfer has linked these mythical bearers of the world with impressions from present-day conflict zones.

A number of new works consist of imitations of the weapons, equipment, and protective clothing of international police and military, making for a full-scale arsenal in the main gallery of HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark and setting a danger scenario that addresses questions related to armed conflicts, authority, and subjugation. ​“Everything that promotes cultural development also works against war,“ wrote Sigmund Freud in 1932, positing the primacy of culture over violence. The Titanic form and size of Kapfer’s objects underscore the excesses and the fascination of power and violence. This can be seen as a leitmotif of the exhibition, which draws on several key groups of works, some of which are on show for the first time in Austria, and unfolds a narrative that encompasses a door to the Louvre in Paris, the lions in the Fountain of Alexander the Great in Skopje, and elements of (North) Korean history. This creates a complex web of different stories that come together as a broad picture telling of architecture, representation, and power and its abuses. Me or the Chaos refers here to the annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea by Russia and alludes to the political tendency to generate oneself as a ​“strong man“ and savior of society, which often enough turns into the opposite. In Kiev, Kapfer made a reproduction of the Napoleon door at the Louvre in Paris, linking the two contexts.

In addition to this show in HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Franz Kapfer is also presenting interventions at the Landeszeughaus Graz, which exhibits a large collection of arms from the early modern age in an impressive historical arrangement. There, Kapfer’s work inscribes itself with its contemporary global reach into the Medieval history of the city of Graz. An artist’s book is planned to accompany the exhibition.

Curator: Jan Tappe