Grids, 2015

Grids are physically and metaphorically an important reference for Dabernig. Curator Matthias Michalka writes that “here an artist is defining his oeuvre as the anti-natural, anti-mimetic, anti-real space of the grid.” Two aluminum grid-sculptures on show were created in the early nineties as part of a larger series, all of them realized by means of montage systems commonly used in residential redevelopments as substructures supporting outer (curtain) walls. The artist presents the sculptures ambiguously: as autonomous objects within the architecture of the buildings they are placed in, as well as in dialogue with the existing structures.

A new installation of photographic images is also presented in grid forms. The photographs were realized at the Veletržní Palác, an early modernist complex belonging to the National Gallery in Prague, representing the museum via its interspaces and opening up the iconography of the grid to administrative and social meanings. In this sense the formal analogy between two architectural structures from the twenties, Prague’s former Trade Fair Building and the Justus van Effencomplex, is extended to a narrative one.

Josef Dabernig, Grids, 2015
Josef Dabernig, Grids, 2015
Installation view Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam
Photo: Josef Dabernig
Josef Dabernig, Grids, 2015
Josef Dabernig, Grids, 2015
Installation view Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam
Photo: Josef Dabernig
Josef Dabernig, No Title, 2015
Josef Dabernig, No Title, 2015
wood, zincked steel
293 x 307 x 379 cm
Installation view Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam
photo: Amanda Mullee